throw your soul through every open door
by effie214
Summary: A series of unconnected Oliver/Felicity pieces from prompts taken on Tumblr. .
1. forget the world now

_Disclaimer: the characters and situations herein do not belong to me. This story is meant solely for entertainment purposes. No infringement is intended._

_Author's Notes: Since all the cool kids were doing it, this is a collection of unconnected short pieces based on prompts received on Tumblr. All are K+ unless otherwise noted. Title of the collection taken from Adele's "Rolling in the Deep."_

_Prompt: "wed me." Title from the Train song of the same name. Set post-"Time of Death."_

* * *

**forget the world now (we won't let them see)**

She becomes a walking barometer after she's shot; she can tell you when it's going to rain or when the temperature is dropping.

She remembers being shot just fine, thank you very much; she also has the scar — which basically means she doesn't want or need the pain.

But it's there, as it always is some way or another in her life, and she tries to mask it as best she can; that, again, is what she's supposed to be good at. Oliver, of course, doesn't buy it — for a terrible liar, he can see through them pretty damn easily — and watches her like a hawk when she starts to rotate her arm or rub at her shoulder. He even pops out to CVS one day, returning with IcyHot and ibuprofen, both of which she keeps in her desk drawer for necessity's sake and also as a reminder that she's every inch as bad ass as Sara is, albeit in different ways.

She gets used to the pain, fights through it even though it feels like wading through sand some days. It's her Lian Yu, in a sense; it's always there, hovering, waiting. It's the devil in her, lurking in the shadowy corners of herself.

A few Tuesdays after they take down the Clock King, she wakes before her alarm with a start. Her shoulder's on fire, and when she tries to rotate it, the pain is so blinding the edges of her vision whiten. She swallows a few times, squeezes her eyes shut as though sheer willpower could make it stop hurting. She does her routine of NSAIDs and patches and heating pads, and by the time dawn has broken, it's just not cutting it and she's even closer to tears than she was before.

She texts Digg to ask for one more "aspirin" to try and beat the pain into submission so she can function. Bless him, he's awake and promises to come by the apartment as soon as he can. She fires off a text to Oliver to let him know she'll probably be working a half-day — she can sleep off the narcotic she knows was her actual pain reliever — and will hopefully be in by noon.

She's just settled herself on her couch with her patch and heating pad and delusions any of it will make her feel better when there's a soft knock at her door. She pads across the small living room and opens the door, jumping back slightly in surprise when it's Oliver, not Digg, standing on the other side of her threshold. "Uh…hi?"

"Special delivery," he says, holding out a pill bottle with one hand and a bag from their breakfast place (when did she start thinking in terms of their and us and we?)

She opens the door and lets him in, tilting her head with a curious look on her face. "How did you —"

"I was coming to check on you and ran into Digg in the lobby." She bites her lip, trying to decide if she should believe him or not, and then decides to let it be. She's in too much pain to really care.

She motions to the couch, indicating he should make himself comfortable, and heads to her kitchen to get a glass of water. As she's turning back to him, she finds herself wondering how he lives with it all the time — not the emotional pain, but the physicality of it; the embodiment. The outside foes they face are strong and dangerous enough, but to have their own bodies turn like them on that? The one thing you're always supposed to be able to rely on? It can be silent and deadly, a ticking time bomb of sorts, one with no prior warning as to when it's going to explode.

He really is a hero.

She joins him on the sofa, curling her feet beneath her and smiling as he hands her one of the pills. She takes it quickly, and then leans back against the couch, head tilted back and eyes closed. She feels a tentative hand on her thigh, and she turns her head to look at him. His hand moves from her arm to the crown of her head, smoothing down her hair before cupping her cheek. Like that night at the foundry, she turns into his touch, but she can feel the hesitation, the guilt, in the touch, and shakes her head. "I'm fine, Oliver. I am fine."

"You almost weren't." There's something hollow to his tone.

"My life, my choice, remember?"

"And now your consequences."

She lifts her good shoulder in a shrug. "I'd do it again. For any of you. We're a team. A family."

He goes somewhere then, eyes fixated on a spot on her opposite wall, and she watches him for a minute, wondering where he is and who's with him. The intensity in his eyes is different when he looks back down at her; it's the Count and his office and making choices all over again.

He's looking at her like she shouldn't ever have to make that kind of decision, that he doubts she'd always choose him.

Always. It's as certain as she can be in this these masks, these war zones with their ricochets.

She starts to feel tendrils of the medicine working, weaving ribbons through her system as easily as Oliver is sliding his hands through her hair. She sighs deeply in relief; the shooting pain is gone, though a low throbbing remains. It's light years from where she was an hour ago, so she'll take it. She settles more firmly against his side and he folds his arm around her — because of the life that I lead seems a hundred second chances ago when her head is on his shoulder; it's a pause and a hand is hovering over the reset button — and she picks up her remote, fishing through her DVR selections.

She sort of forgets what she picks to watch, because the "aspirin" kicks in full force and she can finally breathe normally again, be normal again. It's a fleeting state of grace, but she'll believe it, disappear within it, for as long as she can.

Oliver's oddly tactile this morning, and she makes herself sink into it unquestioningly, just as the pain relief is cushioning her. He is titanium most days, unbendable and unbreakable, and she cherishes the moments where he softens and lowers his walls enough that she can peek over them. Her eyes slide shut as his hands stroke her hair lightly, and he moves to rub her temples.

Staccatoed pictures click through her mind; Digg driving them home the night she got shot, Oliver insisting on crashing on her couch, his fingers in the same place when the rebound headache from the narcotic set in. (Even when they win, they don't.) That he remembers — cares enough to do it again — has her releasing a contented sigh, then a groan before a breathless, "Marry me."

His hands still for a microsecond, and she makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. She feels more than hears his chuckle, focuses on his heartbeat strong and steady in a world where she feels so off-kilter all the time, and smiles when he moves his hand to her arm, rubbing up and down softly. "You just want me for my massages."

"Your face doesn't hurt, either," she says, pursing her lips as she shifts against him, trying to get more comfortable (as if it were possible.) Her eyes are still shut, so she misses the flash of something that crosses his face that holds a hint of tomorrow, a harbinger of things to come.

"Beauty fades," he teases gently.

"Your bank account doesn't."

"I see how it is. Looks and money."

"Pretty good five-year-plan," she replies. Her voice grows smaller, contemplative, when his hand moves to her back and rubs it with broad strokes. "Oliver?"

"Hm?"

"What do you think of my scar?"

"I think it needs to be the last one you get," he replies quickly, hoarsely.

She nods seriously in agreement, then smiles lazily as she feels herself drifting towards sleep. "Oliver?"

She can't note the smile in his voice, but somehow always remembers it being there. "Yes, Felicity?"

"Will you be here when I wake up?"

He presses a kiss to the crown of her head. "Sleep, Felicity."

She does, and just as she's dozing off, he whispers, "I promise," and over the years, it's that promise, not the oxycodone, that soothes her pain most.


	2. heaven or hell

_Prompt: join me. _

_Title from the Civil Wars' "C'est la Mort."_

* * *

**heaven or hell (or somewhere in between)**

He politely declines Isabel's offer to join her for lunch, making a seemingly unhurried exit and heads to the elevators. In actuality, he can't wait to get back to his room and shed his CEO persona, that real world mask that weighs far heavier than the one he actually dons.

(He is so much more than that mask, though; more than the arrows or the personal crusade that's turned into a team effort.

It used to be about the life he led. Now it's about the one they're building together.)  
He sighs quietly as the elevator rises, checking his watch and scrubbing at his face a little bit. Unfortunately, together is not something that's applicable to him right now; he's in Moscow for acquisition meetings and she's back in Starling, manning her old post in the IT department — the balance they keep between their distance during 9-5 and their proximity from 5-9 is at once one of the hardest and easiest things he's had to do — and damn if he doesn't miss her with a ferocity that stings just as much as his bare knuckles on the punching bag in the foundry..

She is where the island ends, and the beginning of a legacy outside his parents' mistakes and his own nightmares. He's freer now that he's fallen — not all the way, but with her wind at his back, the journey isn't as treacherous as he'd once anticipated, and he finds himself reveling in how she keeps turning to him when all common sense tells her she should run the other way.

Then again, she is the most remarkable person he's ever met, not common in the slightest. Were he a philosophical man, he could wax poetic about her being a missing puzzle piece, or the element he'd once lost but found again in her. But he deals in blacks and whites, in truth and all her consequences, and it comes down to the simple fact that they are better together. They want to be better together, and are willing to work for it; take the good with the bad, knowing mercy is found in their proximity to one another, whether they're a fingertip or thousands of miles away.

The elevator finally dings its arrival on his floor, and he makes his way into his suite, He tosses his jacket over the back of an armchair and loosens his tie with his right hand, fishing in his pocket for his cell with the other. He pulls up her information and requests a FaceTime chat, sitting back on the bed as he waits for her to answer.

Though it's still before dawn in Starling, there's a light in her eyes when she appears on his screen. It's a look he's come to recognize, a beacon that guides him home, and if he accomplishes nothing else in this life, making Felicity Smoak look at him like that will be his greatest achievement.

"Hey," she says, voice thick with sleep, a gentle smile on her face.

"Hey," he repeats, smiling as she scrunches her nose up as she yawns. "You sleep okay?"

She nods silently, eyes raking over him as she assesses whether or not he did as well. Truth be told, he'd tossed and turned most of the night, a feeling of something missing ticking loudly within him and keeping him up. Oddly, though, he found some comfort in it; he'd lived his life on someone else's timetable for so long — listened to the minutes counting down to his destruction instead of measuring the good times — that it still sort of amazed him that it could change so drastically. Had you told him last year that in her absence he'd have to sleep with his feet sticking out from under the sheets because he was so used to the coolness of her feet warming on his calf, he probably would've given the same tilted head disbelieving look she'd used on him when they first met. He revels in the normalcy of it all, he supposes; grocery lists with mixed handwriting, toothbrushes sitting side by side, clothing needing to be dry cleaned entwined around one another just as intricately as their owners' heartstrings — things he not only took for granted while he was on the island, but that he'd never known he wanted until they were given to him.

That's the other thing that gets him — there are days he doesn't think he deserves this happiness, that he's made so many mistakes any other wishes should be left unsaid — and yet, she has had faith in him before even he did. She'd asked him once if she could trust him, and his answer of "you can trust me" was the most honest thing he'd said since coming home.

And now they're not only sharing a home, but building one, and perhaps he is a little philosophical (or maybe just slightly sentimental without her heartbeat next to him, beating out a litany of pride and support and love) because there's a part of him that is thankful for his time on the island, because without it, he wouldn't have her — and without her, he wouldn't be himself.

She pulls her knee to her chest and rests her chin against it, asking after a minute, "So how many levels of Candy Crush did you beat during the morning meeting?"

"You wound me, Miss Smoak."

She grins. "Get back here and I'll kiss it better."

He groans a little bit, and infuriatingly (adorably), she smiles even wider.. "Next time just come as my personal IT specialist. Or an assistant to my assistant."

"I can only imagine what…things…you'd need me to handle."

He shakes his head at her, his own smile belying any actual annoyance. "You're enjoying this far too much."

She lifts one shoulder in a playful shrug. "Maybe." Her expression softens a little bit, and he can hear her picking at her duvet cover. "It's weird being apart like this."

He knows (God, does he know); they've only been officially together about five months, and this is the first time they've been separated. For someone who had planned to do the vigilante thing alone, he now finds the loneliness uncomfortable; ill-fitting, unlike the way his hand fits perfectly at the small of her back. But he finds it to be a necessary evil; she'd been miserable as his EA, and it had gnawed at him how the one person he'd never raise his bow against had been injured by him all the same. He'd drawn her into his world and then realized he wanted to give it all to her. He wants her, above all, to be happy, and if that requires a little sacrifice and Googling time differences to schedule morning chats, he'll do it. He gives her a gentle smile and says, "Just a few more days."

She nods and yawns again, hiding it halfway behind her hand, and he tries to ignore the niggle of discomfort at the bareness on her left hand. Instead, he says, "Why don't you fly out and meet me? We'll make a long weekend of it."

She smiles slowly. "I don't know. My boss is a hard-ass. He might not let me come."

He's not sure if that's meant to be an innuendo or not; either way it sets off cascading memories in his senses — so much so that his own hand grips the comforter beneath him, remembering how it feels to draw lazy patterns against her skin, and he swears he can smell the citrus of her shampoo. He tries — failing spectacularly, of course; it'll be those images and not wrapped sweets he'll disappear into during the afternoon session — to blink them away, continuing, "What about London? I'll meet you at Heathrow."

She nods, the light in her eyes somehow impossibly brighter, and he breathes it in just as he sighs promises against the crown of her head as she falls asleep with her head on his chest. "I think I can squeeze you in."

The wink lets him know that was an innuendo, and he just shakes his head again. She's the most extraordinary thing to ever happen to him, this seemingly plain-Jane IT girl, and it's as wonderful as it is maddening. "I'll have Shannon make the arrangements."

"Speaking of, she's going to come looking for you if you don't get back down there."

He glances at his watch and sighs quietly, knowing she's right, and appreciates the gentleness in her tone when she continues, "I'll talk to you during my lunch hour."

"It's a date," he says, standing and reaching for his suit jacket. "Have a good morning."

"Love you," she replies, and he disconnects, walking back toward the elevator with renewed drive to get these talks done so that he can concentrate on the important things, like how his name from her lips is a rebirth and faith — heavenly deliverance for someone who's spent far too much time in purgatory.


	3. look around your world pretty baby

_Prompt: amuse me._

_Title from Del Amitri's "Roll to Me."_

* * *

**look around your world pretty baby (is it everything you hoped it'd be?)**

Rule number one to being Oliver Queen's jill-of-all-trades, Felicity learns early on, is to keep the wine glass (mostly) full.

(Mostly being the operative word, of course; the man has more money than God and Warren Buffet put together, and after three years at his side, she deserves to let him spoil her with a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape every now and again. She thinks of it as a well-earned job perk.

It goes without saying that seeing him naked in her bed, head pillowed on his right arm with his left stretched protectively around her waist, is an even better bonus.)

Tonight, though, she sips her Malbec both because it's heaven on her tongue and because she just can't school her features nearly as well as he can, and hiding behind her glass is the only way she can pretend she's not laughing.

She shouldn't be; she _knows_ she shouldn't be, but the look on his face as he schmoozes investors and board members, pulling that playboy smile he once tried on her, desperately trying to look interested, is hilarious in its bored disdain.

(She takes a moment to revel in the fact that she can not only identify which expression he's throwing at her [indulgent smile, amused smile, hungry-please-remove-all-your-clothing-posthaste-because-not-being-able-to-touch-your-bare-skin-is-second-in-terms-of-hell-on-Earth-only-to-Lian-Yu grin, escape-to-a-halcyon-moment-despite-the-encroaching-shadows thankful smile] but that she seems to be creating even more of them for him to wear.)

She can tell he's failing miserably, but that's simply because she knows the masks he dons like the back of her hand he holds - not the one he puts on in the foundry, but the ones that represent this tenuous balancing act; this pendulum in constant motion even as he tries to be the immovable object against everyone else's unstoppable forces. He slides between CEO Oliver Queen and Arrow Oliver Queen, skating a precipice she worries they'll both fall into - for wherever he goes, there she'll be - and it's only in the safety of the inky night and her arms that she sees the true Oliver Queen, the man who has struggled to live in this second life, the healing man who would break a hundred times in a hundred different ways if it meant protecting those he loves, the man whose kiss and promise of tomorrow still linger on her lips even as she vacillates between which one defines them best.

(Tonight, it's the latter, and contains the gratitude they have for the coming of the dawn, the light of a new day, because they both realize they've been one breath away from one last chance too many times for comfort, and they're thankful for the fact that _maybe_ didn't turn into _never._)

He counts his days in failures and losses while she quietly shores up the cracks in their meandering path; he takes care of everyone else so ferociously that she thinks sometimes he forgets he needs to be believed in too. Her strength is quieter than his, but no less strong, and they take turns carrying each other when the world tries to cut them off at the knees.

She never expected to end up here, but somehow now it feels like this is the only place she was ever meant to be.

(Partner is one word that encompasses so many more, including three he whispered against her mouth one night last July as they sat on the QC roof watching fireworks and a future explode against an inky sky.)

He catches her eye from across the room and sneaks a wink in her direction. Her amusement softens into an expression of pride and love, as gentle and fierce as she is. She sees their CFO start to approach with his wife and mouths, "Jennifer."

(Sometimes he saves the city and she helps save him. That he trusts her enough to let her in both parts of his life is oxygen on the days when she can't breathe.)

The smile he gives her is relieved and thankful, and she nods - _always_, a black-and-white certainty in a world made of shades of grey - and she continues to sip at her wine until one of her former colleagues in IT grabs her attention and offers congratulations regarding the simple but flawless diamond on Felicity's left hand.

Even as she makes light but attentive conversation, she notices when the CFO and his wife move on and Oliver is no longer standing in the same spot as before.

(Not that this surprises her; she gets the sense he's always been running - first away from responsibilities and adulthood, then toward another hood altogether. When they'd eventually intersected, these two previously thought parallel lines unknowingly moving at the same pace, they'd skidded to a halt at the resulting crossroads.

She doesn't remember who reached for whom, but the fact that they worked to take that first step together is something she values even more than wine or the safety of his embrace.

Everything goes very quiet in her head when she wonders how still he'll be with a baby in his arms and his own ring reflecting moonlight and the victories instead of the defeats.

There's a part of her that thinks this isn't real, but he might just make her believe.)

She senses him before her peripheral vision alerts her to his approach, and habitually steps back to meet his hand as it falls into its default position at the small of her back. His thumb rubs against the lace overlay of her black cocktail dress in greeting, and he offers a patented businessman Oliver smile at her companion, who returns the gesture and politely excuses herself. Felicity turns into his hand, her fingers running down his lapel a little bit. "You're doing great."

He sneaks a kiss to her temple and rests against her a little bit. She can feel the weariness in his frame, and is - despite all the things they have done and all the things they have become - amazed at this marvel of a man whose only easy day was yesterday. "How much longer?"

She shakes her head, mirth dancing across her visage once again. "Is that the CEO version of _are we there yet_?"

"_Are_ we?" He replies, grinning when she rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

"Tell you what," she says quietly, barely suppressing the shiver that dances down her spine as his hand skirts across her hip, finger following the pattern laid out on the applique, "give it another hour and I'll let you find out whether or not I've got anything on under this dress."

It takes every bit of self-control she has left not to revel gleefully in the strangled noise that comes from the back of his throat, and it takes her a minute to answer after he bargains, "Thirty minutes."

"Forty-five."

"Done." He steals a quick kiss before approaching an international contingent interested in Far East distribution. She finishes the Malbec and forty-four minutes and thirty-two seconds later takes his proffered hand, running once again into evermore.


	4. home with honor

_Prompt: their wedding photo._

* * *

Even now, he can't stop staring at her.

(It doesn't matter that he's legally allowed - and expected - to, but he revels in the thrill of certainty; of tribulations survived turning into lessons learned. He's been forced to endure so much pain for so long, but choosing to be happy with the most remarkable woman he's ever going to know is the greatest thing he'll ever do.

The POWs have a saying: home with honor. Finally - with her - and after all the battles fought and wars won and lost, he truly knows the meaning of both.

They've sat so long in silence and doubt, and now they stand side-by-side in the one thing that will keep them going during the dark violet hours of the hardest days: faith.)

They're into their new home, a townhouse in the same subdivision where she lived before, and there are boxes and chaos absolutely everywhere.

(He'd been fine with the idea moving into her place; it was plenty of space and overall just a great house. She'd been adamant, though, insisting this was the new start to the biggest beginning they'd ever have; they'd climbed so many walls to get to this place, and it was time to build something together.

In the end, he's happier not having to see the disapproving look of her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wright, to whom he'd apologized about 43,000 times for scaring her one night when he'd forgotten his key and decided to parkour his way up the drainpipe to the roof atop the back screened-in porch and to her window to let himself in.)

He smiles widely as she backs up a step onto the bubble wrap that had cushioned the frame she had just put on the mantel, and she jumps in surprise, her hand flying to her chest. He knows how her heart's beating in the aftermath, because her heart is his, and its beat is the cadence to which he plans to walk for the rest of his life.

(He knows he'd die for her, but more importantly, he'll _live._)

He lets out a chuckle, which causes her to whirl, the ends of her loose blonde hair catching in the corner of her mouth. She puts her hands on her hips and arches an eyebrow; he wordlessly steps to her, brushes the strands from her lips with his thumb and bends down to kiss her gently. She hums into the kiss, hooking her fingers in the belt loops on his jeans and when he draws back, her soft smile makes him grin again.

She shakes her head, her smile contradicting the idea that she might actually be annoyed with him. He kisses her forehead when she slides her arm around his waist, and wraps his own arm around her shoulders when she turns so she's next to him, both looking at the mantel.

The picture she's put up is one of them on their wedding day, some three months before. They're hand in hand, walking away from the tent set up for the reception to steal a quiet moment on a day that had truly been lived out loud.

It had been Felicity who turned around first, and something had blossomed in his chest as the light from the setting sun glinted off the rings on her finger, magnified by the fact that even on the most important day of their life, even when they're side-by-side and in perfect step for once, she's still got his back.

(They still have their nights - and she's said over and again how much she loves spending that time together - but now they have each other's days and tomorrows, and they emerge from the defining darkness hand-in-hand.

The thought strikes him as he stands at the front of the small church in Manchester that she's been doing that a lot longer than he'd realized, going back to her rebuilding the foundry and somehow, effortlessly and quietly, rebuilding _him_.

Maybe even longer.

For someone who, for a long while, couldn't tell armistice from war, he is for once not battle weary or dark or defeated. This is his victory, and he will revel in it.

Turns out there _was_ a choice to make.

Thank God he made the right one.)

The photographer had snapped a picture when Felicity had looked over her shoulder to locate the source of the shuffling grass behind them, smiling beatifically. He'd kept walking, fingers laced with hers, and he just loved that picture, because of how unabashedly happy she was. It was that look, he knew, that would get him up in the morning.

They'd snuck off to the back garden behind the main house at Hildene, one that opened to a spectacular view of the Green Mountains. In October, the trees lining the hills were breathtaking in their colors, all lines and vibrancy and a little bit of magic - so much like Felicity. They'd stood at the foot of the small rock wall that protected anyone walking the periphery of the property to slide down the steep hill into the corresponding valley. He'd wrapped his arms around her waist, bending slightly to rest his chin on her shoulder, kissing just below her ear and smiling as she shivered - it had been unseasonably warm all weekend, perfect for her lace cap sleeves and keyhole back, and that he could do that to her makes him the remarkable one - until he looked back down at her, of course.

He'd whispered _I love you_ against her collarbone, and she'd covered her hands with his.

He'd stared at her wedding ring for an arguably abnormal amount of time, breathing her _\- them_ \- in before saying, "Hard to imagine this all started with a crap cover story and an IT Department."

She'd smiled, her quiet laugh moving his hands as they rested on her abdomen.

(He'd tried not to picture her with their baby growing inside her; tried not to remind himself to ask Thea how to paint nails for the end months when Felicity can't see her feet.

He'd tried, and he failed.)

Her reply had broken him from his reverie. "You're Mr. Queen," she'd repeated, turning her head until her cheek is resting against his chest.

He hadn't repeated his original reply. Instead, he'd turned her all the way and kissed her gently but meaningfully, and then murmured, "And now you're Mrs. Queen."

She'd laughed heartily, head tipping back and the loose curls she'd let out after removing her veil for the reception, sliding away in solidarity and amusement.

(If it all ends tomorrow, it's the look in her eye when she gazes up at him will make everything he's ever done worth it.)

Their wedding planner had approached quietly, saying, "Sorry to interrupt, but they'd like to start dinner now."

They'd both nodded, and he took her hand once again when she offered it to him. He'd kept her an arm's length away - probably more, to tell the truth - and now she was - and, amazingly, by choice - less than one breath away. Permanently, in a world he knows is not.

(They'd both seen and done extraordinary things, but the fact that she'd said _'til death do us part_ and _meant_ it with the huge heart she has is the greatest thing he will ever achieve.)

They'd dined and danced until about 3 AM and went back to the private house across from the main hotel at Hildene. She'd taken her shoes off somewhere after they cut the cake, and as they walked down the hill to their accommodations, he'd picked her up in a fireman carry so she wouldn't have to put them back on, nor would she have to walk on the gravel.

"My hero," she'd murmured, cupping his cheek.

"Yours," he'd confirmed before opening the outer door to the house and placing her on the entryway carpet. The wedding planner's assistant had dropped the key under the welcome mat so Oliver wouldn't have to look after it during the reception, and he'd craned his head to look up at Felicity when she started rubbing soothing circles across the expanse of his back. He'd stood quickly, grabbing her by the waist and swallowing her surprised "eep!" with a kiss.

"Inside," she'd whispered, and something in him stirred when he'd realized she wasn't talking about the house.

(Hilariously, though, because they've never lived by other people's rules and expectations, she'd returned from hanging up her wedding dress to find him sound asleep on the bed.

He'd get to see the specially chosen green lingerie ensemble - she'd tell him later why she chose it; she'd deliberately avoided wearing the color at either of their jobs, saved it for this very moment - and he takes his time running his hands across the garter and the thin material covering her stomach, and the beautiful curves of her breasts.

He will remember that night for as long as he lives, and doesn't feel the least bit guilty that the memories will probably get him through several board meetings.

The most vivid memory of all is him kissing the bullet wound she'd received from the Clock King, and her reciprocating with attention on the scar on his bicep from when he'd rescued her from the Count. Things that could have killed them, but instead ultimately helped to get them to focus on _living._

They are synchronicity, scars and stories, and she knows every word.)

He realizes she's been speaking while he was lost in the newly built section of their foundation, and kisses the top of her head in apology.

"Tuning me out already? That's not a good sign."

"Hm?" he teases, and she swats at his side.

She huffs out a bemused sigh. "I asked you if you liked that one, or if you wanted to pick another picture instead, like the one where you saw me for the first time."

She'd laughed at the idea of them not seeing each other before the wedding; they'd already _done_ "for better, for worse; in sickness and in health." Everything else felt like a little like a formality.

He's known for his poker face, but it had failed him that day. He'd been standing in the garden, heart beating a mile a minute, and heard her approach as her heels kicked against the brick path laid there. She'd put her hands on his shoulders and he'd turned, mouth falling open and eyes wide as he took her in.

(He still remembers the first time he'd seen her dressed up; the Dodger case. He hadn't believed what he was seeing.

This moment multiplied that tenfold, and there had been a part of him that wanted to do her victorious fist bump. Instead, he just drew her to him, murmuring _you're so beautiful _against her temple, rubbing her mostly bare back and counting down the minutes until she would feel the platinum band on his hand all over her skin.)

Finally, he shakes his head and then motions to the picture she'd just placed. "I like that one."

She smiles and then checks her watch. "It's past six. Are you hungry?"

"I think the dishes are in the guest bathroom," he says and she just looks at him for a minute.

"Of _course_ they are," she eventually says. "Why wouldn't they be?"

"Maybe the movers -"

"If you say they think out of the box, Oliver Queen, I will divorce you tomorrow."

(They end up ordering pizza and sitting cross-legged on their living room floor, lighting a few candles - why she can find those and not the necessities like dishes is a mystery she forgoes trying to solve, because it just somehow feels _right_ \- - and drinking the housewarming present Thea had dropped off earlier.

And two years later, in the frame on the mantel, it'll be a sonogram that makes him smile.)


	5. colorblind

_Prompt: From nonplatoniccircumstances on Tumblr: Felicity/Oliver-it's her time of the month and he knows her well enough to know how to soothe her (*cough*back massage*cough*). Again, established (I know, I know, I'm sorry!) and warnings for talk of girly things, baseball, clotting disorders and general schmoop. _

_For Liz and ladychi._

* * *

Her sigh curls against the master bedroom ceiling of her townhouse as the down comforter and equally plush pillows settle familiarly around her. Her bones are weary and her lids heavy as they slide against the still-risen sun beyond the shades she's pulled shut, but she's not focused on the day still blazing beyond. In fact, she's not focused on much beyond being in her most comfortable pair of pajamas (which may or may not consist of a pair of Oliver's athletic shorts and a far-too-big-for-her Seattle Mariners t-shirt she'd gotten him for Hanukkah the previous year and then promptly stolen - hey, it wasn't _her_ fault his clothes were so much more comfortable than her own) or the heating pads perched both behind her (where his absent hand should've been, she thinks grumpily to herself) and on her torso.

Her phone, tablet and laptop lay momentarily ignored on various surfaces around their bedroom as she shifts against the luxurious fabric that covers the bed - one of the few times she'd allowed Oliver to spoil her a little bit (outside of electronics, anyway; hey, even she has standards, and, double hey, dating a billionaire _should_ have perks) - and her hand lies beneath the covers on her right thigh, meticulously checking her protection for the day.

(To think there was a time talking about her bed, Oliver and protection all in one sentence would've set a blush to her cheeks as vibrant as the Rosier she's enjoyed on occasion.

She has no comment on the allegation she may have held that same hand a little to the left a few times with the same picture she has now in her mind - chiseled jaw, eyes that sometimes hold more answers than questions, abs that she thinks all faiths can agree are a religious experience - and that her groans then were not made of the discomfort that is the explosive behind the noises currently detonating from her mouth.)

She's got a pad on and a tampon in, and yet she's still thankful for the dark navy of the sheets on which she lies; her cycle has always been heavy, and the one thing her father _did_ leave her with - a blood clotting genetic defect - makes it more dangerous for her to be on birth control, so there's no chance for medicine to alter it. Instead, it's five days of Aleve and heating pads, and in the last year, Oliver to help her through.

(She still laughs when she thinks of the first time he'd realized she was an _actual_ girl this _actually _happened to. Digg had rolled his eyes and muttered, "_How_ many women have you been with?" and she'd laughed so hard she'd doubled over at the small sink in the foundry where she'd been washing the blood off her hands. Oliver, of course, had rushed to her and worried she'd somehow been injured, and had literally stopped in his tracks and stubbed his toe on the iron shelf adjacent to the bathroom when he'd seen the Tampax box.

Around the same time the next month, though, she'd been touched to find a bag of Hershey's Kisses next to her work station in the foundry - as well as four brown paper grocery bags full of every feminine product on the market. )

It shouldn't touch her as much as it does that he makes the grocery store runs at two in the morning, traversing the aisles similar to the one she will one day walk down to get to him, but it does, because she would completely understand if he wanted nothing to do with blood ever again.

For her, though, he is many things, and one of them is colorblind.

(She finds out later he'd done the same thing for Thea rather retroactively, but never unnecessarily; he'd been on the island when she was a girl becoming a woman, and despite what has transpired, she is still his sister, and he will be here for her because of the times he was not.

It's the same for Felicity, and she thinks it makes both her and Thea love Oliver more.)

She hears the click of the lock over the soft tones of a Discovery Channel documentary, and sits up quickly, hand reaching for the Taser Oliver insisted she keep in the bedside table even after he moved in. Her fingers drop and finally, a tired smile pulls at her lips when he hears him call from the small foyer by the front door. "It's just me."

The sounds of home fall around him as he enters, the tall layout of the house echoing and encompassing his presence just as his person does when they're together; the clank of his keys in the blue hand blown glass dish they'd gotten in Greece the summer before, the dull thud of his shoe hitting the wall as he toes it off, the rustle of fabric as he discards his suit jacket all tell her he's arrived home early from his trip. He brings his overnight bag up the two small flights of stairs to their bedroom, setting it in the corner before leaning over to give her a kiss.

He answers her unasked question before she can even open her mouth, and despite her physical discomfort, she smiles wider at the familiarity and his scent as it washes over her. "Caught an earlier flight."

"How'd it go?" she asks, nimble fingers undoing his cuff links and then adjusting her heating pad, watching him in her periphery as he slides the pinstripe shirt off his frame.

(She silently loves that despite all their yesterdays and the promises of tomorrows, there's still a little thrill that shoots through her at the fact that, despite everyone else's assertions, he is never out of sight or out of mind.

She has always seen him, will always find him, and the biggest thing they've survived is the fact that for him, the same is true of her.)

"We'll see," is his noncommittal answer, and he pulls on his sweats before making his way to his side of the bed. He pulls the duvet back and slides in, reaching for her. She slides against his bare chest, eyes sliding shut as his hands start to work at her neck muscles.

(She kind of loves that he doesn't ask how she is. He just knows.

There are few things that make her feel better on these days.

He is all of them.)

He's beyond silent when he does this for her, so different than the other times his hands are on his skin - in sickness and in health (given their close calls, for as true as it might be, _til death do us part_ is still a little too raw to think about some days) - so focused on taking hands that so often hurt and making sure that this time, they heal. She feels the broken skin on his knuckles as it trails down her spine, thumbs alternating and relaxing her muscles, and she makes a mental note to tape his hands better the next time he boxes using the dummy; feels the calluses from the sparring sessions with the yantok on the palms of his hand jump across the constellation of freckles in the middle of her back. His index and middle fingers circle in matching patterns, spreading out across her back and back in again, going to the edge but always coming right back to center – just like the promise he'd made to her a hundred times with his words and his eyes – and she can feel the rest of her body start to relax, the tension that kept her so uncomfortably wound ebbing away.

The funny thing is that she doesn't quite remember how they figured out that him giving her a back massage helped her so much during her period. It's just one of those things that seems to have sprung into being; Athena from Zeus - powerful and yet comforting, serene. What she appreciates most, though, is the fact that in spite of his purgatory, her own hell, and this rabbit hole she joined him in because they should never, ever be alone in the depths of it, he treats this like _it_ is his mission; that her five days a month of being miserable are indeed the apocalypse breathing ash as it approaches, because it affects her, and therefore, it affects _him. _It's a big deal because they _make _it one; there are no utterances of "in the grand scheme of things," because here, there is nothing grander - nothing more important - than taking care of each other.

(He cares because she does, and vice versa. And as in all things, they are in this together.

A team.

Sometimes you need an arrow to an extremity. Sometimes you need a hypothetical 40-bit encryption key.

And sometimes all you need is a hand to hold.)

She reaches around and captures his wrist gently, bringing his knuckles to her lips and kissing them in silent but profound thanks. She hums low in her throat when he nuzzles the spot at the back of her neck in reply, and he rests his fingers carefully atop the heating pad still on her abdomen, cocooning her in safety and warmth. His right hand goes back to rubbing the tension out of her, and when he's done a few minutes later, he threads his fingers gently through her hair, laughing, as he always does, when she squirms beneath him as his breath hits the cartilage bar.

(He was all half-truths and lies for so long. She was never that stealthy, but she still loves the fact that he knows all her secrets.)

She's relaxed enough to reach for her phone and start thumbing through the emails that have piled up since she took a half-day - she never thought she'd miss being his EA or dislike being back in IT, but having to answer to a supervisor other than Oliver is something that is something she's having a lot more trouble getting used to, so the fact that he's _here_ (and he's so, _so_ here) is something she hopes he hears in her quiet, content sigh - and she wordlessly hands him the remote so he can find the hourly airing on "SportsCenter" as they break down the Sox versus Yankees weekend series.

Outside, the world still turns.

Inside, everything in her own is, for the moment, steadfast and still, and just right.

fin


	6. yours and mine and ours

_Author's Notes: Guess who's back, back...yeah, I'll just stop there. A wonderful meme came across Tumblr today that inspired some things, this piece being one of them. It is again established and kidfic, so proceed at your own risk. _

_As always I'd love to hear what you think, and thank you so much for reading._

_**Prompt: I told you we should have just gotten that German Shepherd puppy.**_

* * *

**yours and mine and ours**

It's half past…she squints at the clock, having discarded her glasses in the wake of a pounding migraine 444 stomped feet ago…four hours since they _all_ should have been asleep, and at this point, Felicity is about _thisclose_ to just curling up with her overexhausted toddler on the ground and screaming alongside the epic meltdown that has been raging like the storm that had cut off Abby's weekly Skype date with her Auntie Sara.

Felicity loves weekly Skype dates with Auntie Sara, and she's not above admitting that a good portion of her reasoning behind insisting on quality time with her daughter's godmother is because it allows her to shower for more than two minutes and, on days made of sunshine and unicorns and miracles, allows her to make herself an honest to God sandwich and not just munch on leftovers Abby's left on her plate. Thankfully, Sara knows and understands her ulterior motives, and only judges Felicity a little for them. But she amuses their towheaded, big-eyed girl — because _his _and _hers_ never compared to _theirs_in the beginnings or the ends — with stories and flashlight finger puppet shows and Lord only knows what else, and Felicity makes sure she takes time as she luxuriates in water that has actually had time to warm up to be thankful that though her own Smoak history is about as clear as the steam that fills her bathroom, Abby still has more family than she knows what to do with.

Not that the pontificating is helping her now. Abby's in what Oliver once called Hulk mode, which would make Felicity laugh again right now if she weren't so tired and frustrated she's afraid _she_ might break down, rigid and red faced and crying and just _done. _They've tried explaining. They've tried bribing. They've tried cajoling. They've tried distracting. They've tried walking and bribing again and there was even a discussion about whether or not they should just drive around Starling in circles to see if the smoothness of the road journey would soothe her just enough into sleep, but that discussion had been tabled when Felicity pointed out she and Oliver were both so tired _they'd_ probably doze off first.

Oliver is steadfast but equally helpless beside her, and she just wonders how on earth they thought they'd manage to be good at this.

They've survived death a hundred times, but being responsible for a life just seems beyond her some days.

His hand is rubbing the back of her neck, and she's not sure if he's trying to soothe himself or her or Abby by proxy, and she leans into the touch, eyes slipping shut and a tear escaping traitorously. He folds her into him and she just breathes against his collarbone; she just takes a minute, takes his strength — or tries to, anyway.

It goes very, very quiet in her head — and then she realizes it's gone very, very quiet in the house.

She opens one eye, heart thudding against hope, and finds that Abby has curled up in the middle of the living room floor, thumb in her mouth, sound asleep.

She and Oliver don't move. .They literally hold their breath, and as they do — better when they're together — stand their ground.

He goes to open his mouth, probably to ask if they should put a blanket on top of her, and Felicity shakes her head so hard the end of her ponytail smacks him upside the jaw.

The next time Auntie Sara Skypes, Felicity debates whether or not to mention the fact that she and Oliver stood there, absolutely unmoving, for more than half an hour — not staring at the bright spot they'd somehow managed to bring into what had once been a very grey world as they once had — but out of fear that the Kraken might awaken again.

(She _does_ mention it, and this time when Sara disappears, it's because she's fallen off her bed laughing.)


	7. welcome to your life

_**Prompt: "Rrgh. I dunno. Could we just sand down all of the sharp corners? Would that be possible?"**_

_Title from Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."_

* * *

**welcome to your life (there's no turning back)**

Moira Queen wishes she could say she hasn't seen Felicity Smoak this flustered before.

But Moira Queen is trying to reform, and lying is sin number one, so, sadly, she can't.

She'd thought for a long time that they'd never see eye-to-eye, even with all the help from Felicity's impressive footwear collection. But for as much as Moira likes to move her chess pieces around the board just so, she still has to acknowledge gamesmanship, and when she'd realized Felicity _wasn't_ playing a game — that she really _did_ care for Oliver (and not just in a way Moira could exploit, for which she will apologize for the rest of her life for even when she lacks the words — in offering the first cup of coffee after a fresh pot has been made, in loaning Felicity the first pair of earrings Robert ever gave her, smaller than the other pieces in the vault but her favorite because _he was_, in crying in a wedding boutique when Felicity tried on her gown for the first time, never replacing Danielle Smoak but being honored to stand in for her in the moment Felicity allowed her to) — she'd started to see that the younger blonde was far, far more than the nervous, babbling, sometimes ill-timed assistant.

She challenged Oliver; put him in his place when she needed to, and guided him the rest. She was fierce; in her family, in her work, in trying to heal what had been broken before she'd even arrived. Moira thought she saw pieces of herself in the younger woman, though admittedly, there had been cracks in that reflection of hers for some time; she was dogged, almost blindingly so, but always well-intentioned. She always did what she thought best, and in the ashes of the aftermath of a miscalculation, she managed to remain strong even in her vulnerability.

The one thing they do not have in common, however, is how Felicity _hopes. _Oh, how she hopes; in spite of rhyme and reason and all evidence to the contrary, Felicity just _believes._

Looking at her now, standing in what will become the nursery to her first child, utterly overwhelmed but still steely in her determination, Moira thinks that may be the one thing that saves them all.

She has to smile to herself as she watches Felicity glance between four parenting books, all open to their respective chapters on babyproofing. She's worrying her wedding band around her slim finger as she reads, the diamond band throwing arced prisms off the pale yellow walls. It reminds her of Oliver's room when he was small, and her expression turns wistful as she remembers. She'd insisted on decorating it herself, much to the horror of her mother-in-law — though the Deardens came from money, they were nothing compared to the Queens, and despite cotillion and Sarah Lawrence and nary a hair out of place for more than twenty years, Moira had just never been good enough.

(It eats at her to realize she's made Felicity feel the same, and she glances down at the small bag at her feet. It's everything to her, everything she has to give, and it will probably never be good enough.

Still, though, for the first time in a long time, she hopes, and until the day her grandchild is born — and the one that comes after — that's the greatest gift Felicity has given her.)

She finally clears her throat gently, trying not to startle the increasingly flustered woman. She does anyway, just a little bit — baby steps for all of them, it seems — and she still sees the trace of panic that flits in Felicity's gaze when she speaks. "Oh, Moira, I'm sorry! I didn't see you there."

The older woman smiles genuinely, waving away Felicity's concern and trying to put her at ease. "Quite all right, dear. How's it going?"

Felicity surveys the room. The convertible crib is a deep cherry wood, and Moira idly wonders if her grandchild will follow in its aunt's footsteps and gnaw the rails as she teethes. Hanging above is Moira's own gift, a hand-blown glass mobile of stars, and in the corner, a glider and footrest big enough, she guesses, to fit mother, father and baby comfortably.

"It's…going," she finally answers, still working her hand nervously.

Moira pauses for a long minute, then puts a halting but warm hand on her daughter-in-law's shoulder. "You're going to do fine," she says softly. "You're going to do _beautifully._"

Felicity swallows, and Moira can almost see the gears turning swiftly in her head. "There's just so much to _do_. I just don't think I'm ever going to be ready."

"Can I let you in on a little secret?" The irony of the phrase does not escape her, nor does it Felicity, but this is not the time or the place, and when the other woman nods, Moira finishes, "You will _never_ be ready. I'm still not."

Felicity tilts her head a little bit in questioning. "Oliver's a wonderful man," Moira says, glancing down at her own wedding ring; she still wears it because her first vow was and will always be to her family, and despite the mistakes she's made, the lies she's told, that's one truth that has never tarnished. "And I think we both know you had more to do with that than I did."

Felicity moves to interrupt, but Moira shakes her head minutely. "I still wonder who he's going to become, and I still want all the world for him. But you've already had so much to do with giving him that, Felicity; you've given him the start I should've at the beginning. And that's how I know you're going to be a wonderful mother. You and Oliver together….you're a force of nature, and this child — this _family_ — is lucky to have you."

She's not sure she's ever been so honest, certainly not with Felicity and probably not with herself, and she wonders if this is what salvation feels like; if this is what Oliver felt when he was rescued, first off the island, and then by the remarkable woman standing next to her. A tear pricks the side of her eye and she tries to laugh it off. "Oh, don't mind the sentimental old bat behind the curtain."

Felicity, bless her, won't let her. "Thank you," she whispers fiercely, grasping her hand tightly. "_Thank you_."

Moira breathes deeply — freely for the first time in a long time, she thinks — and clears her throat before reaching for the bag she'd left sitting in the doorway. "I brought something for you. Well, for the little one. It's not much, but…"

Felicity pulls out the well-loved, much-mended brown bear and lets out a watery half-sob, half-chuckle. "Henry," she whispers, clutching it to her chest. "Oliver said he lost it."

Moira blinks away her own tears, swallowing a few times to compose herself, the moment bittersweet in knowing Felicity already knows all of her son's history as well as his future; it's a hello and a goodbye all in one. "Robert…was hard on him. We both were. I think part of the reason he was the way he was before the…" she motions with her hand because everything her son's endured is the one thing her mind can't comprehend, "was because he was so sensitive when he was younger, and Robert equated that to weakness. He indulged him later, surely, but, _oh_ the number of times Robert told him to be a man." She shakes her head, remembering fierce arguments around the kitchen island after the children had gone to bed, before she'd become the shell of whatever she was. "He was too old to sleep with a bear," she finishes, rubbing a gentle hand over the worn fur. "So he said he lost it. I never told Robert about the times I'd check on Oliver and find Henry right next to him." She smiles unevenly. "And now he'll look out for your baby. Queen family tradition."

Felicity starts a bit, but not at her mother-in-law's words. Instead, eyes wide and smiling, she swiftly moves Moira's hand to her stomach. The matriarch waits, and as she feels her grandchild kick in apparent approval and thanks, she passes that title on as well.


	8. the joy in the mending

_**Prompt: **__**"Mondays are your diaper days."**_

_Title from Snow Patrol's "New York."_

* * *

The minute Charlotte is born and placed in her arms, Felicity looks up at him and whispers, "I don't ever want to do anything else."

He understands completely.

He is in awe of the tiny creature in front of him — and of the woman holding the greatest thing he'll ever do in his life, who today became even more of a titan in his eyes than she already was — and has to wait a few minutes to hold his daughter because his hands are shaking so badly. The nurse places Charlie in his arms — that nickname will stick for the rest of her life, much to her chagrin, but only Oliver is allowed to use it and she never stops smiling when he does — and he looks between the OB/GYN staff and his wife to make sure he's doing it right.

What _it_ encompasses, he's not sure exactly. Holding her, changing her, feeding her, parenting her. All of the above.

He has no experience with babies; there had been nannies and Raisa and general youthful disinterest on his part. But he's never wanted to do anything more right in his life. He's had to learn, to adapt; it's how he's survived. How he's saved people; maybe even himself, finding some of the pieces that had been lost along the way.

But he's not trained for this sort of mission, this encompassing need to protect her — the one he feels in his weary bones, even more than he does for her mother, and he doubts there's anyone who could teach him. They're going to have to do this the hard way, by trial and error, by truth and consequences, and as Charlie slides a hand around his finger and squeezes, he realizes the one thing he _does_ know how to do is love her, and he promises they'll figure the rest out together.

Together turns out to be the operative word.

Oliver Queen becomes a stay-at-home dad.

It has nothing to do with the money; Charlie's great-great-great-great-great grandchildren won't have to work if they don't want to. Felicity still does, doing security consulting work with Digg and Sara at a company the former set up after Slade was finally, painfully defeated. But for all that he's moved over the years, all the living he's had to do to remind himself he's alive, it's in being with Charlotte that Oliver finally understands why he survived at all.

There was a time when he didn't think he had any, and he's not going to squander what he's been given again.

He loves seeing the world through her eyes in part because he understands the newness; when he'd come back from the island, previously mundane things like traffic or jackhammers or the sound of metal gates on storefronts being rolled up in the morning had taken on an entirely different tilt and meaning.

(He swears she snuggles him a little tighter when they're at the park down by the waterfront and the foghorns sound in the distance, like she knows the noise still makes his heart race a little faster.

He holds on to her as fiercely as he ever does then, kisses Felicity when she's with them, and while it'll never be okay, it's at least a little bit better.)

There's just nothing better than seeing her light up at the world around her — it's fitting, given how she and her mother illuminated some very dark places within him. It's fascinating to him, rejuvenating in a way. Uplifting.

Hopeful, that most dangerous of words.

Everything is big again, an experience. He's not ashamed to say he took a picture of the first time she discovered she had toes and happily gnawed on them while he FaceTimed Felicity so she could see it live and in living color. He caught her on her first step and trip, was the recipient of her first baby high five — even if Felicity maintains for the duration of their marriage that she has eternal winning privileges because Charlotte's first word was "mama" — and he's the one that kisses the boo-boos, makes her lunch, sings along with the damn songs on the kids channels even when she's napping.

And today, he's the one that has her in the swings at the park, waiting for Felicity to arrive for a little stolen quality time during the workday.

Even on their worst days — which, for once in his life, don't outnumber the good — he wouldn't have it any other way.

She's a little more than a year old now, with just enough blonde hair on her head for a Pebbles Flinstone type hairdo, held in place by a TARDIS blue bow because his wife, is, well, his wife. Charlotte's grinning cheekily up at him, her top and bottom front teeth in full view as she scrunches up her face because she knows it makes him laugh.

(It's gotten to the point that he doesn't know if she's mimicking Felicity, or if he and Felicity have been together so long that their synchronicity has extended to their facial expressions.

It's a dizzying, circuitous route, but it can't be all that bad if it ended up here and like this.)

Charlie squeals in the swing and reaches out, and Oliver knows Felicity's arrived. He matches his wife's grin as she too does the scrunch-face after kissing him hello,deftly plucking their daughter from her harness. "Well, what do we have here?" She balances Charlie on her hip, right hand tickling the spot of belly that's exposed as the little girl's shirt rides up in the movement. "Who does this little girl belong to, hm? I think I might have to take her home with me."

Charlotte squeals even louder, and Oliver chuckles as Felicity gets it full force in her ear and winces. As he does — _always_ in this world of potential _nevers_ — he puts a hand at the small of her back and rubs gentle circles against her black trenchcoat, and she just as instinctively turns into his touch. He leans down and steals another kiss, returning her smile as it rests against his mouth, and then blows a raspberry under their daughter's chin after he pulls back.

"You hungry?" he asks quietly, guiding them to a picnic table adjacent to the playground.

She nods, resting Charlie on her lap and smiling her thanks as he passes her the salad she'd requested from the deli around the corner. "It's been a day."

He pulls out the Tupperware holding Charlotte's lunch and slides it toward his girls, uncapping a bottle of water as Felicity opens the container lid one-handed.

"You want to talk about it?" he asks, unwrapping his own sandwich.

She shakes her head even as something in her peripheral vision catches her attention. He feels his brow quirk in a silent question when recognition seems to settle over her and she chuckles to herself.

She runs a hand over Charlotte's head and then reaches for him, threading her fingers with his, amusement dancing in her eyes. "The playground moms are checking out my hot husband."

He's still stealthy enough to manage a glance without seeming like he's looking, and sure enough, there's more of a bit of attention being paid their way. When he looks back at Felicity, though, he has to throw his head back and laugh at the look of absolute _pride_ on her face; were they in a server room, the victory fistbump of joy would be in full motion. "Jesus, I love you."

"Damn straight," she replies with a wink and a look of love he'll never get tired of seeing, and helps Charlotte try a bit of salad using her fork.

(_The Wizard of Oz_ had always been his favorite story as a kid, a black-and-white world exploding into color, and a group of normal people who turn into heroes.

There was a time after the island that he wondered if he wasn't the tin man, searching for his heart.

Looking across the table at the woman from his past who had given him the girl from — and dreams for — his future, he knows he's found it.)


	9. mvp

_**Prompt: Oliver/Felicity, "…They just grow up so fast."**_

_This references a scene from 1x15, and is also set in the same 'verse as "nothing comes from nothing (nothing ever could)"._

* * *

Felicity stands in the little shade the maple tree adjacent to Maggie's soccer field. The eight-year-old is running full-tilt alongside her teammates while her mother tries to wrestle her hair under a hat she's somehow unearthed from the bottom of a bag because her hair elastic broke. Felicity's eyes keep moving, though, the master of multitasking; she glances over the field, then to where Amelia is on the bleachers trying to figure out her pre-calculus homework, and as it always feels destined to, end up on Oliver, who is perched on the edge of his folding chair, intent on watching Maggie make a sweet move around the opposing sweeper.

She glances down at her watch and hopes the tie game is broken soon; they have to go pick Claire up from her voice lesson in time for all three girls to tackle dinner and homework, and if they're lucky, a good night's sleep.

(There are days, she thinks, where she wouldn't mind trying to hack a federal database or six instead of trying to wrangle her family's schedule.

There are more days, though, where she wouldn't trade this for the world.)

There's a rustle behind her, and it's not from the leaves on the tree. Being married to Oliver Queen has heightened her senses enough that she turns and evaluates the change in her space in a smooth pivot of which fifteen years ago she wouldn't have thought herself capable.

The man who comes to stand beside her is in his mid-twenties, with sandy brown hair and matching eyes. He's dressed nicely in a pair of jeans and a pullover, warding off the oncoming fall chill settling over Starling, and oddly, Felicity isn't put on edge by his presence. He meets her gaze shyly, and there's a flash to a time ago — and to another man who would _become_ the Flash — and she smiles, somehow needing to put him at ease.

"I don't mean to bother you, Mrs. Queen, but my name's Johnny Williams."

Something in the back of her brain sparks — lightning from long ago, but somehow it still burns. He waits as her brain works overtime trying to place him, and then it's an onslaught: the foundry a hundred lifetimes ago, face-to-face with Oliver and in his space just as much as he was in her head, and _it was a mistake_. "You're Ken Williams' son. The…the Ponzi scheme guy." She winces. "Sorry."

He shakes his head, and she's surprised to see relief in his stance. "No. No, that's totally fine. I…I know what my dad did. I've come to terms with it."

Felicity smiles gently in spite of the confusion still settling over her at his sudden appearance. "That's…good. I'm glad."

There's a roar as Maggie's goalie makes a beautiful save, and Felicity is aware of Johnny's gaze following her own. "They grow up really fast, don't they?"

She's immediately on-guard the moment he says it — always will be with her girls, Arrow history or no Arrow history — and her stance tightens. Her companion's, however, does not, but still she says nothing as Johnny waits a beat before finishing his thought, looking over his shoulder at a redheaded woman, who gave him an encouraging smile. "I, um, found out today that my wife is pregnant."

The automatic response of "congratulations" still bubbles up within her — she fights to hold on to her ability to see the good in people despite what's been shown to _her _ — but she says nothing, and just waits.

(She got good at that a long time ago.

It helps that all the waiting has been worth it.)

"I work at the _Sentinel_," he says, his reference to the Starling City newspaper momentarily lost in the crowd reaction to a scuffle at mid-field for possession. "I started looking at the Vigilante cases a little while ago."

Felicity's eyes fly to Oliver and she immediately starts trying to formulate a plan on how to get them all the hell out of there and put a lid on this before it explodes. It feels like she's going from the pan into the fire, but she's more than ready to burn. And then she sees Johnny reach out a placating hand that actually never lands anywhere near her visibly rigid body and glances sidelong, warily, at him. "No, no, I'm not trying to investigate anything, I'm sorry," he says in a rush, glancing down at her hand, which has instinctively balled into a fist. "I just remember the Vigilante came to see my dad when I was ten. And I remember the Vigilante _left._"

There's something about his tone on that last sentence, the emphasis on that last word, that stops the panic at the base of her spine, even though her face has remained carefully neutral throughout the entire exchange. "I remember people…bad people…died. But he let my dad live. He ended up letting a lot of people live. He saved a lot of people."

(There's a tightness in her chest when he says that, because despite all their efforts, it's always the defeats that settle within her; the ones they lost seem to count more than all the ones they found. Shado. Tommy. The 503. Eventually, Quentin Lance. Nyssa, who tried to save him.

For all she has in front of her, she misses what she doesn't.)

He takes a deep breath and she waits for the sucker punch. "You all did," he says, lowering his voice. But it's not in warning or the beginning of a shotgun negotiation; he's not threatening to out their operation. Still, she remains in a fighting stance that would make her husband proud. "My wife…the Canary saved her from a group of men as she was walking home from work one night. You helped our city, and nobody ever _thanked _you."

Her mask remains refined. "Johnny, I'm sorry, but I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I mean, I remember your dad from the newspaper, but this Vigilante thing…?" She trails off, shaking her head, throwing him what she hopes reads as a hopeless shrug.

He levels her with a look more knowing and certain than any he's shot her way during the entirety of their conversation — an interaction that's going to take her a bottle or four of pinot noir to process — and it reminds her _so_ of the _I call bullshit_ look she'd leveled at Oliver that first time in the QC IT Department. "Mrs. Queen, it's pretty obvious you're part of Team Arrow."

(She nearly says _we don't call it that._

For once, though, she almost wants to.

They've suffered in silence for so long, but they've also celebrated. It feels…nice that someone outside the little family they've fought through hellforged fire to make appreciates that.)

"I like puzzles," he says after a minute. "It took a little while, but I put it together."

(_So did we_, she thinks proudly, glancing between Oliver and her girls and her memories. _So did we._)

He clears his throat and extends his hand, smiling when she shakes it. "Anyway. Like I said, just wanted to say thank you. I'll let you get back to it."

(She likes that it's open ended; likes that this is, finally and forever, a reward.)

He walks away, reaching for his wife and lacing their fingers together, Felicity watching them the whole way. She misses the game-winning goal, but wraps her arms around Oliver and for once, she breathes in the victory, when the next week, a large envelope of news clippings and reporters' notebooks arrives anonymously at the house, a hastily scrawled note of _it's all yours_ on a post-it note on top.

It's her own little participation trophy, and she smiles to herself as she locks it tightly in the safe.


	10. say you'll haunt me

_Author's Notes: Hi, everybody! Remember me? (I doubt it, but let's go with it.) I've been terribly remiss in updating this collection on this site despite something like 15 chapters being added over on AO3, so prepare for a major chapter dump over the next few days. I'll do my best not to inundate you. _

_Please note this was written over the summer, so the references to Felicity's mother were just speculation at the time. _

_And as always, I'd love to hear what you think._

_Written for Sunday Six on Tumblr, though it's never _just_ six. Title from the Stone Sour song of the same name. _

* * *

He leaves when she's just shy of her fifth birthday, and through the years, somehow the picture his mind holds of his daughter is always Coke-bottle glasses, pigtails and a smile that could light the world. He remembers that even when his world was crumbling, often at the hands of Felicity's mother's mental illness, when that little girl that looked at him like he hung the moon and the stars, everything had made sense again.

But now _he_ is looking at _her_, in the most unexpected of places: on a beach in the Caribbean a mere five minutes from the seasonal home he set up with his second wife and their children, and where he's at a beachside watering hole watching the FA cup, and suddenly _nothing_ makes sense, but he's never been so in love with a state of confusion; it is, in actuality, a state of grace, and he revels in it even as he is unworthy of it.

She's the most beautiful ghost he's ever seen, and he watches in wonderment as his past and her apparent future, going by the rings on her left hand, collide in harmony to the waves crashing against the shore. Both he and her companion smile when she pulls out a floppy hat and about a dozen other things from a tote bag, and he remembers her love of "Mary Poppins," how he'd bought an extra seat to leave empty when he took her half-siblings to see it in New York for her.

He's never forgotten. His heart has just broken too many times that the slices that come with missing her threaten to make him bleed out.

She's looking at the man he's assuming is her husband — technically his son-in-law, but his heavy heart tells him he had to be a father first to claim that title — the way she used to look at him. This man she's chosen is clearly her world, and as they settle into their day of relaxation, they reach for each other in tandem, and he has to smile when the young man brings Felicity's knuckles to his mouth to kiss them.

Even next to each other, he's never going to let her go, and in that instant, her father knows he's a partner worthy of his Felicity.

He wonders if she knows how hard he fought to keep her with him, keep them together; how her mother went underground time and again, how the police in one state wouldn't enforce the custody decree he got in another. He hopes she doesn't know how he disappeared into a bottle for a decade from the pain and frustration of the alienation, that the only reason he got clean was to attend her high school graduation, or that, four years later and with the help of his youngest son helping him use Google to look for any online presence she might've had, had been in Cambridge when she walked from MIT with her degree.

He's sure she doesn't know her mother spotted him and told him in no uncertain terms that twenty years does indeed a chasm make, one of hurt and anger and betrayal and confused children crying themselves to sleep every night for almost a year because Daddy had said he'd come back.

He'd typed out a thousand emails to her when his son had found her on LinkedIn, has a pile of addressed Hanukkah and birthday cards in his desk drawer, and had steadfastly refused to have formal portraits of his family done because she was missing and as a result he is incomplete. There's just so much to say, he knows, and yet nothing at all, because all the words in all the languages would never be enough. Amends are achievable when you're a worthy, better man, and with his Felicity, he's not. So he'll continue to love her from afar and let the man — who, while Felicity's father has been lost in his own reminiscences, seems to have left his daughter to her floppy hat and book — take care of her the way he could not.

And because the universe laughs at the plans of men and proves them fools, the stool next to him is occupied with Felicity's companion when he turns back around to watch the end of the match.

He opens his mouth to say something, but the younger man beats him to it. "So that's where her eyes came from."

Her father swallows hard, choking on twenty years of memories and shame and change. Still, he takes the hand and introduction when it's offered. "Oliver Queen."

"Sam Smoak." He has a hundred questions and explanations and feelings of unworthiness to even ask about her, and his heart feels like it's going to beat out of his chest, but he can't help but look back to his little girl. He doesn't know what he's asking when he whispers, "Is she…"

"Everything," Oliver replies simply, even though it's not. "She's…just _everything."_ His tone is reverent, respectful, _adoring_, and the fact his daughter is so thoroughly loved warms Sam even on a beautiful late spring Caribbean day.

The knot in his throat is making it hard to push the words past the time lost and all the things left _un_said, but he still tries. "She's had a good life?"

Something darkens Oliver's eyes for just a moment, and his words are weighted when he finally answers. "She tries to make the world better. There are good days and bad days."

He has no right to ask, but in this moment he is a man in a desert of perdition finally being offered a drop of water after wandering for so many years. "How long have you been there for both?"

Oliver smiles, glancing back at Felicity, and the sheer adoration on the younger man's face is so bright it rivals anything the island could produce. "Longer than either of us had realized, I think."

Sam motions to the band Oliver's been twisting absentmindedly around his left hand. "Honeymoon?"

Oliver shakes his head slowly, and for the first time, his visage sparks with just a hint of nervousness, but Sam still feels the strength of Oliver's gaze as he studies the older man when he says, "Babymoon, actually."

Sam rubs his hand over his face at the news. His baby's having a baby. "This is one of those times I wish I still drank."

Oliver tilts his head, and Sam knows in his bones it's something he's picked up from Felicity. "Is that why you left?"

Sam shakes his head. "_Because_ I left."

"You're here now, though."

Sam looks back at Felicity, who's still leafing happily between her preferred pages. "I didn't even say goodbye."

He expects a "why did you leave in the first place?" or "why didn't you come back?" — alibis and excuses masquerading as reasons why, the answers to which Sam dreams about never answering in the violet nightmares of his darkest hours — but Oliver simply stands. "Now's as good a time as any to say hello." When Sam doesn't rise to join him, Oliver says quietly, "We've lost a lot the past few years." Though the words come easily, Sam know the battles that have entrenched themselves into the lines on Oliver's face were anything but. "Including my parents by happenstance. You have a choice to give her something I never can. And she deserves it, Sam, but so do you."

The reverent tone is back on that word "choice," a weight that tells Sam choices are what define people to Oliver, probably to Felicity herself; that decisions made and chances taken are their truth, not necessarily the outcomes, and there's an odd sense of absolution coloring that idea. There's a freedom there, room to breathe in that second chance, and he decides not to waste it.

(He finds out Oliver's own island story later, of course, and embraces the man to whom he becomes both a friend and a father figure, holding tight to him in a way that will again never fully explain the depth of what he feels — the gratitude that Oliver had taken a trip to the islands given what Lian Yu had done to him that gave Sam his little girl back — and in that moment, the verbosity Sam shares with his daughter isn't needed.

Oliver and Felicity get to know Sam's wife and boys in New York, though it's "Matilda" they see on stage, and their first family portrait is taken by a nurse as they're all taken by Alexandra Grace Queen's arrival into the world.

Despite the professional ones they pose for over the years, that one remains Sam's favorite.)


	11. quiet but I'm sure (absolute)

_From a meme prompt over on Tumblr: "Why are you still wearing clothes?"_

_Please note that this chapter is rated M for I am mortified about it, but I wrote smut._

_Title from "Absolute" by the Fray._

* * *

He glides his finger around the edge of his tumbler of whiskey, feeling the condensation from the melting ice and the thick heat of a southern summer intermixing on his palm. He stops when the vibration starts to sing; not that it'd be heard on the iron-wrought balcony of the Atlanta Grille, where Walter and several coworkers - _his_ coworkers now, too, Oliver has to remind himself - are enjoying an after dinner drink above the traffic on Peachtree that passes below them, their buzzing louder but disinterested in the group he's gathered with, focused instead on heading to the North Georgia mountains or perhaps Lake Lanier for the weekend.

("Did you know there's, like, twelve Peachtree Roads in Atlanta?" Felicity had asked the night before he'd left for this trip, kneeling on their bed in a half-buttoned dress shirt of his, swatting a persistent curl of her hair off her cheek as she folded the clothes he handed her from the closet into his carry-on. She'd perched on her knees, bending forward slightly and unknowingly (or uncaringly) exposing her breasts to him as she rolled his socks and placed them in the shoes he'd laid against the bottom of his suitcase, and he'd stopped moving, leaning against the door jamb and unabashedly watching her.

Marveling at her.

Knowing she's a gift and not a reward, but also that she's everything for always, and that's about the only title she needs.

Except, perhaps, that of Mrs. Queen.

What strikes him about their relationship is that they both respect and take pride in the fact it hasn't been perfect. It's been hard fought and they've hurt each other. They've tripped on their fault lines, scraped their knees on a tarnished brick road, bled when their hearts had been broken like so many of the promises made to them; they'd just been lost until they had nothing _left_ to lose.

It's a hard truth, but it's _theirs_, and they wear it as a badge of honor, regardless of whether on a particular day it feels like a scar or a wound - though unlike those things the world know exists, their oral history is whispered into murmured kisses and late nights where her head is tucked in his shoulder and her hair is tickling his nose; a moment he's present in and never wants to leave is found in him looking up at first light and watching as she throws her head back as she rides him, the shirt she claimed a long time ago - fitting, given how long she'd taken hold of his heart - fluttering away from her body, and his hands moving desperately to catch her, lest he risk losing her again.

He's seen their future, too, as has Digg, because it's in a small telltale ring box tucked safely away in a safe that could survive the apocalypse.

She hadn't really noticed his lingering, giving him random tidbits about Atlanta, like how a small town thirty smiles to the south [she _thinks_ is her hurried caveat, nose scrunching as she tries to remember] saved Sherman from burning it simply because a cousin lived there, and when she'd looked up from putting his toiletries in their bag and zipping the suitcase closed, she hadn't had time to react when he crossed the room in one stride, lifted her fully onto her knees on the mattress so she was tall enough to wrap her arms around him, cupped her face and kissed her passionately, slowly, longingly, like he had the first time - and the second, and third, she'd tell him later - _like you wanted to make sure you'd never forget_ \- and he'd shaken his head and replied, _I wasted too much time with you, and now, I don't want to miss a thing._

His shirt was gone from her frame in an instant, her hands were on his belt even faster, but still he slowed them down as they panted, joined together and foreheads touching, to tell her he loved her, because even if he tells her every single day, it'll never be enough.)

Walter claps a hand on Oliver's shoulder, drawing him from the sounds of the summer concert series in Centennial Park. "You did well today," his stepfather comment (Oliver can't say _former_ yet, maybe ever). "Your ideas for expanding the online content accessibility were inspired."

Oliver smiles, and though he still feels like a kid playing grown-up - his suit is custom but feels like the time his mother was out of town and his father had forgotten it was Halloween, so Oliver had gone as a businessman in his father's too-big suit and Thea in one of Raisa's uniforms. But his thanks is genuine. "I want to get QC back to where it was."

"And we will. Though I wonder..."

Oliver chuckles at the teasing glint in Walter's eye, knowing what's coming next. "Felicity had nothing to do with the presentation," he laughs. "Said I had to do my own homework for once in my life."

"I always knew I liked that girl. Even if she _did_ decline my job offer."

"We probably couldn't afford her," Oliver says, the amusement catching in his throat. He looks down at his watch and realizes it's almost time to check in with the woman who may be temporarily out of sight but who is never - _has_ never, even when she existed only in the recesses of his imagination as to what he really wanted to do and be in life - out of mind.

"Tell Miss Smoak I said hello," Walter says and they shake hands before Oliver heads inside the Ritz Carlton and toward his room.

He slides the key card into the electric lock with one hand and begins loosening his tie with the other, but stops short on the threshold when he senses something's amiss.

The bathroom door is mostly closed, and there's a glow emanating from the tiled marble room, and he takes a more defensive stance; he _knows_ he left it open and dark when he left this morning. He shuts the door almost silently and hears the familiar strain of Felicity's favorite violin concerto.

At that, his shoulders drop and he relaxes, stepping fully into the room. Sure enough, a familiar pair of jeans, ballet flats, tank and sweater are folded on the king sized bed, and Felicity's laptop is charging in the corner, her overnight bag tucked to the side of the desk that lies against the wall.

There's a slight splash of water, and he knows she's in the bath; why fly to surprise your partner - _boyfriend_ and _girlfriend_ don't cover the three words that have never been little for what he means when he says as he breathes them into her; _partner_ comes closest - and wait for him in the lobby or the restaurant to have dinner when you can test his swanky bathroom instead?

With a grin, he unbuttons his shirt and pulls it off, chucking it in the vicinity of Felicity's, and is reaching for his undershirt when he hears her moan.

He knows her moans - _I'm fine, Oliver, it's just a temperature of 103...okay_fine_I'll go home; I can't hack this firewall - when the hell did the CIA upgrade their systems; you need to go into a career as a masseuse, Oliver_ \- but sound is not any of those.

Not even close.

He twitches against his pants when she moans again, louder and longer this time, and it takes him far too long to get to the bathroom door and push it open.

She's a vision - when isn't she, really? - with her hair piled into a messy knot atop her head and bubbles dissipating around her breasts as she lounges in the water. He watches as everything undulates around her and knows how her fingers are moving; she is his own type of code, ones and zeroes, that perfect string of combination and compliant that turns everything perfect in a world that so isn't. She's circling her clit with her index finger, pressing down on either side trying to find the best spot.

He feels himself start to strain against his pants and it's his turn to groan when her eyes open and she looks him dead in the face. The oscillation around her increases as she chases the stars; she groans gutterally when she drags her finger up an down her slit, spreading the moisture evenly. She licks her lips and arches her back as her pressure on her clit increases, and he pushes himself off the doorframe and sliding to the side of the tub so quickly that he almost knocks over the glass of what he's guessing is a Syrah. But he daren't blink, for she isn't. There's an almost blackening fury to her movements, the ones trying to chase the white hot tension that precedes release.

He cups her left cheek and turns her head toward him; he ignores the splash of water that douses his pants, instead sucking behind her ear and kissing her fingertips when they come to cover his where they rest on her face.

Her pace grows even quicker, but to his surprise she stops him as he prepares to reach for her and slide two fingers inside. "Just watch me, Oliver," she says, and Jesus _Christ_ if the timbre in her voice isn't a holy experience. She is tight and tense like a coil, but she keeps taking herself to the edge - she rests her temple against his cheek and together they mutter a litany of _fuck, fuck,__**fuck**_ and he can tell she's so, _so_ close.

He presses a desperate open mouthed kiss to her lips and tangles his hand a bit roughly in her hair - she's gentle only when she needs to be, his Felicity, and more often than not, she likes stiff and staccato - and looks down through the film of dissolving bubbles to see her hand working as hard as he's ever seen - or done - it. He finally closes his eyes at that, beyond hard at this point and desperate to push home, but she cups his chin, forces his gaze back to hers. "You want me to come for you? Hm?"

"Fucking come for me," he whispers, absolutely _wrecked_. "Come on, Felicity."

She pumps twice more and presses and arches so far out of the tub her entire torso immediately fills with goosebumps when exposed to the bathroom air. She sinks back into the lukewarm water, and her pants of breath match his in tone and timing, and he keeps his fingers interwoven within the dark strands of her hair. "_Felicity_."

She smiles. "Surprise?"

He has to laugh and takes back his earlier thought; he may have thought about her before he'd met her, but no way could he have seen Felicity Smoak coming - no pun intended (but definitely a repeat of the last five minutes, hopefully a little longer and somewhere a little drier.)

"What-? Why-? _How?_"

She presses a kiss to his mouth, long and slow and sweet, the antithesis of everything she's just done. "Because I missed you, because I wanted to and hourly Delta shuttles."

He glances pointedly around them. "And this?"

She arches an eyebrow, reaches for her wine, takes a long sip before answering. "You didn't like it?"

"I'm trying to find out what I have to do to make it happen again."

She sets her wineglass back on the floor and reaches for him. "Step one, answer this question: why are you still dressed?"


	12. don't you know I dream about you (run)

_Prompt: sky high boots._

_This chapter is rated M_.

_Title from "Chasing Twisters" by Delta Rae_

* * *

She smiles at the bouncer as she makes her way past the rope line to him, oblivious to the whispers that follow. Knowing him from Verdant, she asks after his family and is happy to scroll through pictures of dance recitals and football pad pictures; it reminds her Starling City is more than just scorched earth now, after the aftermath.

He lets her pass and she enters the stunning blue and white club — Thea, upon her return and with her reconciliations, had named it Mythology as an ode to her name's origins, but there's a part of Felicity that thinks the younger woman wanted, _needed_ to bring reminders of bright, sunny days back with her.

Felicity slides and sidesteps through the throng of people in making her way to the bar, and undoes the belt of the red trenchcoat she's wearing, showing off just a glimpse of the spaghetti strapped, black satin and lace number she'd paired with a pair of thigh-high suede boots.

She heads over to the bar and orders a margarita, sliding onto a stool and hooking the heel of her boot in the rung at the base. She takes a sip of the drink when it's ready and swivels around, taking in the light and movement as it dances across her senses. It's hectic and hedonistic; it's people blowing off steam with glasses with salted rims and hands belonging to a stranger whose name they won't remember in the morning.

_She's_ here after a dinner out with two of her girlfriends, intending to say hi to Oliver and then wait for him in his office until closing time so they can head home together.

(She also just likes _being_ with him. It's taken them monumental strides to get here, but it's like they've proven themselves in the journey, not the destination. It's with him that she's learned it doesn't matter that there's life left to go, lessons to be learned and roads not yet traveled; they slow each other down and take their time because they finally _have I time.)._

He's across the club from her, greeting various VIP tables, and one group succeeds in pulling him down to sit, ostensibly to take a selfie, but Felicity sees the not-so-subtle women in the group as they write their numbers on napkins and try to slide them his way.

The look on his face nearly makes her burst out laughing; he looks so uncomfortable, _so_ out of place, and it's just flat-out hilarious that after all the masks and half-truths he's yielded, it's _this_gt;persona that fits him least.

She tries to hide her smile behind her drink as she watches, and then feels another set of eyes on her. Another woman in the group openly evaluates Felicity, looking her up and down, and the blonde just sits back, elbows on the bar, and enjoys it — she's fought to be comfortable in her own skin, fought to live for what — and who — are important, and at the end of the day, she knows who Oliver's going home with; who's going to be draping her body over his as easily and silkily as the fabric of her dress moves against both of them. Let the girls have a little fun tonight. Felicity Smoak's got Oliver Queen's tomorrows booked for the foreseeable future.

He seems to notice the other woman's distraction, and looks to find what's got her so interested. Felicity just smiles and crosses her legs, which look a mile long in these boots, and the distance between them doesn't seem so great now, because she can visibly see him swallow. With a smirk and a shake of her head, she turns halfway back to the bar to set her glass down, and feels the lace hem of the dress pull up even further.

Knowing he's still watching her intently, remembering and imagining with a fiery tension coiling his body, she tamps down her instinct to pull the skirt back down. Instead, deciding to tease him a little bit, she reaches up and lets her curls out of the clip they've been in, knowing he loves when she wears her hair down. She runs her fingers through it, shaking it out a little, biting back a smile when the dress goes even _higher_. But she doesn't turn back around to see his reaction; instead, she asks for a bottle of water and just waits. She waits and thinks about how surprised those women would be to find that Oliver Queen "wooed" his current love interest by showing up at her house unexpectedly — though, to be fair, she'd never seen him coming, even the first time she met him before midday — at 11:45 at night when they were "just friends," letting himself in with the key she'd had made just in case.

(Now, sometimes he'll rest his chin on her stomach, fingers drawing lazy patterns against the circular group of freckles adjacent to her belly button and wonders aloud if they were ever "just" anything, and she'll run her hand through his hair and say they were something and nothing at the same time, and now…well, now they're _everything_.)

They hadn't seen each other for a few days; their latest case had stuck with her, settled in her stomach heavily like grief and inability to help do, so once she'd checked that he wasn't in his leathers and physically injured, or a suit from trying to get QC back and emotionally injured, she'd smiled up at him from her perch on her couch, hair atop her head in a lazy bun and glasses sliding down her nose as she scrolled the web page she was on, dressed in an old Red Sox t-shirt and MIT running shorts. "Hey. What's up?"

He'd answered her question using his version of the Loud Voice — the one with which he said nothing at all: deliberate action, movement, forward momentum; irresistible forces and immovable objects — and he'd leaned down and kissed her: _hello, goodbye, I missed you, I need you, come back, come back, come__**home**__, because it's not one when you're not there._

Feeling him murmur "I love you" against her mouth was as a confession as much as it turned into a litany, a prayer, a piece of God in a world of monsters and men (and not necessarily in that order, and certainly not mutually exclusive.)

Felicity being Felicity, though, had questions: "Why?" she'd asked hoarsely, and he'd rubbed certainty and permanence into her cheekbones with the pads his thumbs, his touch not a brand but instead the honest truth that she is meant to not only be cartographer to his life, but his navigator, his compass.

Just…_his_.

"Because nothing important happened today, and I wanted to share it with you. And I want to share the important days, the good, the bad — all of it. I want all of it. With _you._"

She believes in what she can see, and that is, was and always shall be his challenge as much as his counterbalance, and had leaned back and said, "Are you sure?"

He'd kneeled in front of her, taken her hands in his and after pressing his lips to her knuckles replied, "You're the only thing I know to be true. You're _real_."

(He is, too, and she reminds him of that on his darkest days, and on her own, he loves her through it.)

The bartender sets a bottle of water at her elbow, and she smiles her thanks, turning back to the center of the room. The brunette that had noticed her first is looking between her and Oliver, and Felicity guesses she's trying to figure out why he'd be paying attention to someone like her.

And she smiles to herself, because he knows her not as a woman in a dress looking to get noticed. Instead, he sees her as destinations and detours; best laid plans and balls from left field. .

He knows 7-year-old Felicity hiding her tears behind glasses held together by Scotch tape because they couldn't afford to replace them just yet, trying to balance the impossibilities of her mother's life and checkbook. He knows 12-year-old Felicity, who had stopped in the middle of the National Mall on her junior high school tour of Washington DC because she saw a man that looked horrifyingly, ecstatically like her father and not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed when it wasn't. He knows 17-year-old Felicity, who pulled over to the side of the road in Kansas as she was on her way to university when the blackest sky she's ever seen rolled toward her, her first warning that the ways of the world can be devastatingly stormy outside the bright lights of casinos and safety of Vegas. He knows 21-year-old Felicity who struggled balancing extra credits and living with her old friend/unexpected roommate/_really_unexpectedly pregnant Catherine after she'd been kicked out. And he knows of her this morning, the woman who, after leaving his bed to run with her friend Beth, chose to completely negate the calories they'd just burned by stopping into Beth's bistro for a chocolate croissant and cappuccino.

He'll know of her tomorrow morning as well, and the day after, and the day after, when they wake looking at the signs of the life they're building out of the one he led — toothbrushes side-by-side, a Netflix queue they add things to separately but together that they'll one day have time to watch, and eventually, she'll have his name and he'll have her forever.

He knows all of her, loves all of her — as she does him — and _that's_ why they work.

She pulls some bills out of her purse to close out her tab, and slides from her perch, heading for the entrance. She lets the hordes of people hide the fact that she doubles back and uses the back staircase to get into Oliver's office.

She's using his computer, trenchcoat off and draped over the back of his office chair, working on some email and writing him a post-it to remind him he needs to buy cell phone boosters so she can get service on her devices while she's here, and smiles when, twenty minutes later, she hears the electronic lock outside the office door beep.

"That was cruel and unusual, Smoak," he says as he pushes the door open, but there's no bite to his voice.

She looks up, feigns innocence. "What are you talking about?"

He crosses the office, and when she tilts her head toward him, he gives her a sweet kiss on the cheek but runs decidedly bolder, warmer hands across her neck, shoulder blades and eventually down her arms. "I couldn't follow you."

"And let the people down there know Oliver Queen is off the market? Perish the thought," she teases with a playful shrug. "Let them have their fun thinking they can snag you. It makes them come to the club more; buy more drinks for recognition and liquid luck to try to talk to you. And more liquor sales means more revenue, which means more saving the city from our couch and in my pajamas. Win/win, Queen."

"So you're just looking out for my fiscal future, is that it?"

She nods seriously. "Exactly."

Reaching down, his fingers sprawl openly on her belly, and his voice is hoarse when he manages, "_That_ is not part of your pajama set."

She stands up, twists at the waist a little bit. "You like?"

"Depends." He pulls her to her and wraps his arms around her waist, nuzzling the spot between her collarbone and neck. "Is it my birthday and I get to unwrap it now?"

She chuckles, but her blunt nails aren't as playful when they thread through the short hairs at the nape of his neck to pull him closer to her lips. "No birthdays, but what about unwrapping it just because you want to? Or did you find a suitable replacement for me downst—"

His mouth is on hers so instantly and insistently that he swallows both her words and the gasp that spills out at the sudden movement. His palms cradle her cheeks and his tongue is gentle but insistent, and he groans when she opens to him. She scoots her back just a little bit, and with a significant lack of effort — something she'd find freakish if it wasn't so fucking hot — lifts her to the edge of his desk and steps between her legs.

She rests her right leg on the chair behind him and wraps the other around his waist, urging him forward.

He rests his forehead against hers, hands roaming over the satin, fingers brushing so sensitively against the gentle fabric that it almost feels like she's not wearing anything at all. Her breath hitches by his ear when he gently palms her breast, teasing her nipple taut, and her right hand moves from the desk to the end of his tie. She jerks him up until their mouths crash together, teeth and tongues, and he wraps an arm around her waist so she can arch up into him, open herself to him.

She's curved off the mahogany, completely supported by his grasp, when he pushes aside her underwear and slides a finger through her folds, and he bends to swallow her moan, though when he adds a second digit in his explorations, he's not able to quiet her completely. His eyes darken at the noises she makes; it's an intensity she's seen on his face only when she's around, and it makes her wetter to think that she can reduce him to this; not rubble, for he will still have walls, but he's accessible now, _eager_ even, and she still marvels that a man who can do so much damage with his hands and body and mind uses all of that to know her in the most gentle, intimate way possible; heal and hurt, fire and ice, domination and submission.

There is only this, only them, and the love she feels for him protects them so they can disappear into it, and when he slides his two fingers inside and speeds up his desperate pace — he loves watching her come apart at his mercy; the only thing on earth that can truly break Oliver Queen is also the one trying to help put him back together — she thrusts her hips as triumphantly as she has for any of their victories.

She still has hold of his tie with her right hand and clutches the back of his head, with her left, and he's bent over her, panting and whispering into her neck, urging her forward, and she feels his feral grin against her skin when his thumb brushes against her clit and she bites back a scream. She can't help but laugh as he teases her, even as she twists and turns, desperate for more contact, and he finally leans back to look at her.

He slows down and she groans, and he just chuckles against her hair when he pulls her up from the desk into more of a sitting position. His thumb is _right there_ but instead he pulls it down, closer to her center.

The pressure is gorgeous as he circles her, and a shiver runs through her when he starts to kneel, running his hands down the black suede of her boots, pushing her knees further apart.

He replaces his fingers with his tongue and she grips the desk so hard her knuckles turn white. He hums against her skin, grip tight on her legs so she can't move, and she undulates against his mouth, head back, lips bit so she doesn't scream. He takes her to the edge, once, twice, and she looks down at him with hooded lids and a gaze that clearly tells him to take what he wants so she gets what she needs, and then it's starbursts and supernovas, blinding silence in the in-between, and for a moment, everything in the world is bright and beautiful again.

He brings her down slowly and then stands up, wiping his mouth on his shoulder before reaching for her, and the kiss is slow, memories and thanks and declarations. She moves her hands to his belt and with swift precision releases him from his pants and boxers, cupping his erection and sliding her hand torturously slowly. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead on the crown of her head and breathes the sensations in. She ups her pace, swiping a thumb over the liquid at the top of his cock and she can feel him tensing, getting readier by the minute.

"Not yet," she says lowly, in a sultry tone that just makes him harder, and, contradicting herself, she pumps harder. "Don't you come yet."

_"Felicity."_ It's a plea and a prayer and he pulls back and stares at her, running a hand down the flushed that's painted itself across her chest. He wants to feel all of her, silk and skin and synchronicity, and he also wants to _hear_ her, this gorgeous woman with so many words for so many reasons, and he loves when she talks him through it.

"I want you inside me," she says, and amid his desperate groans, they share a small smile over these very non-platonic circumstances before he reaches for his wallet in the desk drawer. She peppers kisses on the exposed parts of his neck and the top of his chest while still holding him in her hand, and he kisses her again as she unrolls the condom and slides it on.

He slides in and they both sigh even as they set a harried pace. He pulls her closer and grips her hips, and she arches back over the desk again, moving one leg to his shoulder, crying out when he goes deep and hits just the right spot. Her finger moves to between them, circling her clit, and she's tumbling again even as she feels him holding on, but she still flies in it, knowing he'll always follow. She pulses around him and then feels him fall, and spent, his head falls to her shoulder.

She kisses his ear, the little spot between it and his neck, and he runs a soothing hand up and down her back. They separate but stay wrapped in each other for a moment as they try to catch their breath.

He kisses her cheek, brushes sweaty pieces of her hair off her face and cleans up. She adjusts herself but remains on her perch until he takes her hand and pulls her to sit on his lap in his desk chair. She cups his face for a gentle kiss, and then settles comfortably back, a satisfied smile on her face.

Below them, the club pulses with light and life, and she smiles. "Think they're having fun down there?"

He chuckles. "I think we're having more fun up here."

She laughs softly at that, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. "You ever wonder…"

He completes her sentence as fully as he retains her heart. "I think I would have found you under any circumstances." He runs his hands up and down her arms and says, "I would have noticed that ass —" she _swears_ it wiggles on his lap of its own accord, and he retaliates by kissing the tops of her breasts — "and _definitely_ these."

She smiles then, a bit wider and more relaxed. "Once a frat boy, always a frat boy."

He sobers a little bit and then shakes his head. "But I would've seen what I see now — someone gorgeous inside as she is without, and with a smile I'd do anything to see again. But it would've been clear you were _completely_ out of my league and that I didn't have a shot."

She snorts." You realize that about 99% of people would think the exact opposite."

"Well then, this is part of the 1% that's important to me."

She chuckles, running her fingers along his dress shirt, touching and loving his scars, even though she can't see them. She'd long ago memorized the placement of each, and every now and again they'll lie in bed and he'll tell her what she's sure is a whitewashed version of events. But she'll take it over the uncertainty, over the silence. "Better than the mansion and the money?"

He nods, and his eyes are truthful, his tone reverent. "You didn't catch my eye. You were just sort of…the center of the universe all of the sudden, and I didn't get why or how, but I think I knew even then. That's why we found another way. That's why I came back from the island after the Undertaking — had it just been Digg…"

She smiles softly, lacing their fingers together, and _partners_, which used to seem like a big word, settles warmly over her as he speaks. "I meant it the first time I said it, you know."

She unlinks their fingers and rubs her palms on his thighs soothingly. "I know."

"_I_ didn't. Just standing there and hearing you say 'I want to be with you'… just _looking_ at you and wondering when you became the best part of me — I just _knew_ I had to say it. You'd gone from someone who worked IT to everything that was important to me. And if I didn't come back…at least I'd go down having done one thing right in my life in telling you the truth."

She still remembers that night, when he was so close and yet completely out of reach, and a shiver runs down her backbone, darkness and demons at the thought of losing him — then, now, it doesn't matter.

But she also remembers the canyons they've crossed, the chasms they've jumped so the other could catch them — because they'd both fallen long before either had realized they'd leaped — distance, whether it be _because of the life that I lead_ or a nightclub dance floor, is no longer what defines them. Instead, it is this closeness, this entanglement that holds them together. She's not going anywhere; there's no point in running unless she's running with him. And if _he_ should run, well, she's already proven she'll go to the ends of the earth for him.

"You're thinking loudly again," he says, pulling her attention back to him.

She grins. "Where are the earplugs I got you for Hanukkah?"

He brushes a hand over her face, cups her cheek, stares directly into her eyes. In the beginning, the intensity was intimidating, but now it just tells her wordlessly everything she needs to know. She nuzzles his hand as he says, "I love you, Felicity."

The words are still a little bit big, but they're safe now, so she answers anyway. "I know."

He pulls her back to him and emotion catches in his throat when hem says, "I don't tell you that enough."

She leans even further forward, once more into the breach, but holds on to him, as she always has and always will, and murmurs into the skin by his ear. "I always hear you."


	13. let it break your name

_Prompt: "Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now." - Fred Rogers_

_Title from the Uncle Jed cover of "Brother."_

* * *

"You sure?" he whispers, and she only feels it because it's murmured against her temple and because she'd said it to him less than six hours ago at the courthouse across another town line, and he'd just nodded, but she'd known from the way the early autumn light had changed in his eyes that despite their different locale – a small Massachusetts hamlet with two traffic lights and one up-and-coming semi-famous actress to its name – and their different identities (two she'd made for days that were not supposed to include the word "wedding" in them, carefully backbuilding them versus the other, less palatable but easier option of stealing birth certificates that hadn't been needed in many years for proof of anything but heartbreak) that despite the trail of blood and mayhem that seemed to be following them of late despite many the miles and many other monikers, this was the only thing of which he was truly, completely sure.

(There are some days when all they believe in is each other.

She'd repeated that to herself as she'd climbed those steps this morning, smiled at the part-time town clerk-slash-town-historian-slash-high-school gym teacher, handed over their forged documents and signed her wedding certificate with a shaking hand like they're draft papers, because this is indeed a war.

Still, despite the changing leaves of a New England fall and the weight of no ring on a finger that should have one, kissing Oliver as her husband was everything she'd believed in and nothing she'd expected.)

They'd retreated back to their motel off route 109 and she'd cried – touched, this time, she raced to assure him – when he pulled out the bottle of Rothschild. They'd toasted on top of scratchy sheets and with the paper cups perched on the edge of the dingy sink, and he'd leaned past her to put his glass on the side table next to her. He'd braced himself on either side of her and rested his forehead against hers. "This is not how I'd planned this."

She'd smiled, running a thumb over his cheekbone. "We'll do it again."

(She can't bring herself to say _better_, because she doesn't know.

What she _does_ know is that she'll follow him to the ends of the earth, in name and in blood and in sickness and in health, and she _knows_, with every beat of her fighting heart, that it will be in for better or worse and until death do they part.

The world's already tried to make them bend.

But still they stand.

Together.

Unbroken.)

"Anywhere you want," he'd vowed, as seriously as the ones they'd taken in front of the salt-and-pepper haired man, and she had, just as she somehow knew she always would, believed him.

He'd kissed her bare ring finger and she didn't know who longed for something to be there – a token, a symbol, a _sign,_a declaration as loud as a golden glint in the sun might be – more. She'd taken his face in her hands and kissed him for all she was worth – all _they_are worth, because it goes beyond anything they could buy or what he decided was too sentimental to rid the Queen vault of.

And, as sure as she nods against him now, bracing herself for the needle that will touch her hip as soon as the tattoo artist deems himself – and her, she's sure – to be ready to inscribe her promise, the perfect mirror of the one just put on his own body, she'd reached for her phone and searched for a local parlor.

(She is proud of his scars, of all he has borne, as she is proud of her own.

This, though, is not a reminder of what they've survived. It is instead an affirmation that they are in this together; that they _choose_ – something taken from them by fires forged by others but that they will burn within to reclaim – to be together, beginning in the endings, and maybe, just maybe, ending in their next beginning.

It is painful, but then again, the best things can be.)

The world doesn't know.

The world may _never_ know.

But _she_ knows.

And it's all she needs.


	14. give a little time to me

_prompt: forehead kiss_

_Title from Ed Sheeran's "Give Me Love."_

* * *

It unnerves him when it's her kick and not the alarm or the smell of coffee (or even her mouth on various parts of him) that wakes him, and for the first time in a little over ten months, he wakes with a frenzied staccato for a heartbeat and a sense of panic rising out of short, shallow breaths. He puzzles over the discomfort for a minute before looking down at the tiny titan next to him, taking a moment to wonder at the idea that she could change so many fundamental things about him with a steady hand and an even surer heart, until he realizes her brow is not only furrowed in her restless sleep, but that there are also beads of sweat collecting in the ridges.

He takes her hand in his and finds her skin clammy, then presses his lips to her forehead. She stirs beneath both touches and her eyes flutter open as he registers her fever.

She groans, kicking the sheet off her and tries to adjust the tank top and boy shorts she wears as pajamas, and presses the heel of her palm to her head after she pulls the sweaty fabric away from the small of her back. "I feel awful," she rasps, turning momentarily into him.

He runs a hand over her head and to her neck before she pulls away, his body heat frustratingly uncomfortable, a soft look of concern donning his features. He starts to say something, but then shuts it when she opens one eye to look at him. "And if you tell me 'I told you so,' I will breathe on you and infect you with this plague."

He chuckles, sweeping another kiss across her temple and running his thumb across the pulse point on her wrist in silent acquiescence and apology. She'd reported a nasty bug was making its way through the IT Department of Kord Enterprises, and for all the battles they've raged and the front lines they've crossed, even her steadfast determination at first trying to avoid catching it, and then once she started feeling unwell, willing herself to believe it was just a cold, seems to have left her as less than Braveheart in its wake.

(Not that he doesn't believe in that determination, that heart, her bravery, because he does. Somehow, he always has, and knows he always will, because it was she who got him believing in "always" again and, more significantly, in the first place.)

She starts to cough, and he winces at how deep it sounds. She'd been going through cough drops like he goes through tennis balls, but clearly to no avail. The hand on the back of her neck dips to the small stripe of skin showing on her abdomen, and he rubs his thumb soothingly against it. He tries to anchor her in that comfort, the one similar to that which she's given him time and again, but that he still worries over. For all the things he's good at, he wants to be the best when it comes to Felicity.

(He uses a bow and she commands code, but the most important thing he wields is his love for her, and even though the weight of it tires his hands sometimes, he knows it's that arsenal that proves him most powerful.

In the end, he didn't need all the king's horses or all the king's men — or even those of a Queen variety — to put him back together again.

He just needed her hand in his, and his heart with her.)

He kisses her shoulder and finally moves out of bed, going to check the medicine cabinet for something that might help, frowning when he sees nothing. He quickly brushes his teeth, moving back into their bedroom to pull out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

They have a silent but easy conversation, her brow arching in questioning and he hooking a thumb over his shoulder and then slashing his hand across the air, motioning that they had nothing in the house to alleviate her symptoms. She sighs, settling back against the pillows again, and he returns to rinse, throwing his clothes on before padding barefoot to his sock drawer.

(He remembers when she bought the dresser, how she'd left a few drawers open for him without fanfare or even a question as to its necessity. It was somehow just breathed into both existence and acceptance; it was like she is, was, and, he knew, forever would be: just _there_ and just _right._

Home had been as wayward a definition as he's ever been, but he'd realized that night as he wrapped his arms around her, pressing kisses to the triangle of freckles on her right shoulder, that she was his safe haven, his true north; elemental and for all seasons.

Anything and everything.

It's fitting, then, that he'd hidden her engagement ring in the very same drawer before moving it to his safety deposit box, lest she stumble across it while putting laundry away.)

She chuckles as he tries to walk and put his socks on at the same time, and shakes his head even as a smile turns up the corner of his mouth, knowing she's thinking of their first night together, when in his haste, he'd basically tripped over his own two feet while carrying her to the bed and bruised the crap out of his side as he banged into the doorjamb.

(He prefers to remember the sound of her headboard banging into the wall, but lets it slide since she's not feeling well.)

He kneels next to her, running a hand through her hair. "What hurts?"

She puts a hand on her chest, which he delicately moves and replaces with his mouth. She cups his cheek and smiles when he looks back up at her, and then says, "My throat."

He repeats the movement, kissing the underside of her chin, and he feels more than hears when she continues, "My ears."

She laughs beneath his mouth that time, his stubble tickling her sensitive skin, and even though it's hoarse, he finds himself relaxing ever so slightly in the idea that he might be her best medicine.

(He used to count his time in minutes, hours, maybe days once in a while. And for as much as she's made him believe in years again, it's the seconds he treasures most, these little moments that don't feel so small anymore.)

"Head," she says, and when he kisses her forehead, the cycle is complete, back to where he began — and also where he ended: with her, not in a life he leads, but the one they're building together, because for the first time, it's not a tale told in "I" or "me"; it's "us" and "we" and feeling more like himself in those than he ever did on his own.

He runs a thumb over her mouth and teases softly, "How about here?"

She smiles again, sitting up to finish the connection, and he presses all he can into the embrace before standing back up and preparing to head out. "You want Popsicles for your throat?"

She nods. "And maybe some orange juice?"

He nods, then turns and unplugs his cell phone from its charger before leaning back down and kissing her gently once more. "Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of," she says. "Thank you."

"Always," he says, no longer scared of that permanence. And really, it's the least he can do; she has cared for him more times and in more ways than he remembers or deserves, but the one thing she's shown him — _encouraged_ him in, even, to his eternal amazement — is how to love someone through something. He has always borne things on crumbling shoulders, but standing on hers, being able to share that burden, has made him stronger than all the training in the world. It lifts him past the places he was too afraid to approach, innocuously darkens the things he worried might dull her brilliance, shores the fault lines he still finds in himself; all the things he was too scared to be with her.

But now that he's _with_ her, truly and unequivocally _in_ this, arguably more than he ever has been with anything else, the only uncertainty is a welcome one: how much more he could love her, and it's there that her love of mysteries has taken hold of him just as she's taken hold of his mind, body and soul – and, most importantly, his heart – because for once in his life, he can't wait to charge headlong and evermore into the breach.

(It's not the cashier's sympathetic cluck of her tongue he smiles at as he finishes up at the grocery store.

It's the fact that when she deems him a good husband – despite his lack of ring and his own disbelief in a future when he always seemed to be two steps behind trying to outrun his past – he doesn't correct her, because he finally, truly believes.)

fin


	15. from there on we might just grow

_Author's Notes: __Eternal apologies for falling off the face of the earth again. This whole adult/real life thing is for the birds. Thank you for your continued support of this collection, though; I can't express how much it means._

_This was written over the summer, and is thus not canon compliant. _

_Prompt from nonplatoniccircumstances on Tumblr: who you are without me._

_Title from the Matt Corby song/Uncle Jed cover of "Brother."_

* * *

He stands in the doorway of the rebounding Queen Consolidated day care center, leaning against the door jamb, arms folded and legs crossed. He offers a little wave to the caregivers as they get the children situated for lunch in the adjoining room, but after that, his focus is entirely on Felicity, sitting in the middle of the play area, shoes off and to the side, playing with building blocks and their godson.

Her laugh is melodic as she steadies Noah on his feet, holding him at the waist as he reaches out and demolishes what they've built.

(He knows a thing or two about that, about loss, about destruction, and it used to feel all-consuming.

Standing here now, he realizes just how much he's gained; the audacity needed to rebuild everything from the rubble — phoenix and flames and dust to everlasting dust — taken back with her by his side, reclaiming what had been lost.

Defining what has been found, and reveling in it.)

Her head is bent near Noah's ear, and she lowers her voice as she speaks quietly to him. She is gentle in a world that is not; shelter from the storm. She cares for Noah as she does Oliver, with quiet strength that deafens him some days, and a fearlessness to be with them with her whole heart.

(What she doesn't know — what he's wanted to tell her for months now, but the words stumble and staccato and scatter in his throat — is that she has taken charge of _his _heart as well.

It's all he has to give some days, and he hopes if will be enough, because he's realized that in the end, they are not unthinkable. In fact, they're _all_ he can think about.)

He shouldn't want this kind of life; never did before. But he does now, harshly and fully and all surrendering. He's amazed by her ease with Noah; she didn't have much of a guiding parental hand, and yet seeing her with him triggers something in Oliver.

She is unguarded with Noah, open and honest and bright, and Oliver gets glimpses of a carefree Felicity, one that, partly thanks to him, doesn't come out so much. He's trying to be better, trying to do this right, even though her voice is ringing in his head that it's her life, her choice.

He wants to be part of that life, because hers is the only face he sees when he thinks about a future, a family, now. Shadows of doubt and duty slink back into the clarity of his feelings for her, as she is sharp and defining, but they are also heavy with possibility. And yet it feels safe, happy, _right_.

Inevitable.

It feels hopeful, that most dangerous of words.

He watches her pull a dinosaur puppet out of a toy bin, and Noah bounces as she talks in a silly voice, and his wide grin matches that of his godfather, still lingering in the doorway. He's grateful Digg and Lyla trust him with the most precious of responsibilities. He knows the cost of that, feels the weight of that importance. It used to scare him, but now it feels like the most important mission they'll ever take on.

And they'll do it together. Always together, even when they're apart.

(Always remains a big word, but somehow, now, it's attainable.

He just has to find the courage to reach for it.

For _her_.)

Noah leans across Felicity's lap for another puppet, and she can't hold the boy _and_ do a second character, so Oliver pushes off the door and walks toward them.

Noah spots him first and starts bouncing again, flapping his arms excitedly. Felicity leans back so as not to get smacked upside the head, and catches his eye as he approaches. Her smile is surprised but her eyes are happy, and as he crouches down in front of them, he holds out his arms and Noah turns and walks unsteadily into his embrace.

"Hey, little man," he says, situating himself next to Felicity, his pant leg brushing against the hem of her dress as she leans against the shelving unit next to the toy box.

(Something sparks at the contact despite its minimalism, and she's warm and whole and beautiful, and dear _God_ does he want this. He wants his ring on her finger and their child in his hands.

He wants the whole damn thing.)

He settles Noah in his lap and then reaches for the koala puppet the little boy had pulled out.

"G'day, mate," Oliver says in an Australian accent — or so he thinks, until Felicity lets out a bark of laughter.

"That is _terrible_," she chastises playfully, voice vibrantly amused. "What accent was that supposed to be?

He pretends to be affronted. "That was perfect."

"Perfectly awful." She reaches over and covers Noah's ears, and he gets a whiff of her shampoo. "You're going to traumatize him."

"Tough crowd," he replies and she grins. He does too; she's infectious. He loves seeing her like this, so joyful and relaxed. It feels more poignant that it's back in this building, the one bearing his family name and his family shame, a place where he'd managed to hurt the one person he'd never raise a bow against. But being here with her now feels like reclamation, a fresh start and one more second chance.

They end up taking it.

They lean forward and reach their puppets toward Noah's tummy for a tickle at the same time, and then turning their heads, they are millimeters apart, shades of violet memories of an elevator shaft and non-platonic circumstances coloring a ribbon of recognition through him, and it feels like a lifeline instead of a noose.

She's right there. She's always been right there.

And finally, _finally_, so is he.

He leans over and kisses her gently, and it's sweet and sunshine and —

Home.

It's home.

Her non-puppet hand caresses his cheek, and he bands an arm around Noah's stomach to keep him still, and threads his other hand through her hair, thumb trailing behind her ear and down her neck. Remembering himself and the audience of other children and staff, he ends it far too soon for his liking, but rests his forehead against hers.

He breathes her in, savors what is and what's yet to come, because he feels them in his bones; feels the life left to go, a life he never believed he could have until she believed enough for both of them.

"It was still a crap accent," she says, and he puffs in amusement.

"I can't convince you otherwise?"

She leans back and surveys him seriously, but there's a sparkle in her eye, and a thrill shoots down his spine at the mischievousness in her expression. "I'm sure we can work something out. Maybe over dinner and that bottle of Rothschild you promised me."

(Dinner turns out to be Chinese take-out spread across her coffee table, and he holds her to him tightly that night, fingers in her hair and lips on her temple, whispering wishes and plans into her skin.

He still doesn't convince her otherwise on the accent.)


	16. Brand New Day

_Author's Notes: __This was written for the Olicity Summer Hiatus Challenge and thus was written back in August, so it's not canon compliant by any stretch of the imagination. The prompt was a picture of two people hiding under the jacket in the rain._

_Title from the Ryan Star song of the same name._

* * *

Felicity's phone rings at exactly 4:38 in the morning. Startled, she leaps out of bed, scrambling for purchase on anything that could be used as a weapon. She grabs the lamp on the side table, momentarily forgetting it's still plugged into the outlet. She yelped and started to fall forward, her tumble caught by her former boss/partner in crime/new roommate.

She has to laugh at the porcupine resting snugly on his head, and until the day she dies, she'll never understand why she did it – or be more thankful.

He smiles gently, bright as the sun in the very pre-dawn hours, and his hand finds her hip seemingly of its own volition. His circular movements warmer than the bed she'd just climbed out of.

"So?" He asks impatiently, but kindly. "Are we ready for takeoff?"

"Ground control to major Tom," she confirms, an absolute shit-eating grin crossing her face. In the world they're trying to build, everything feels extraordinary – and though childbirth is a miraculous thing in and of itself – the fact that Digg and Lyla found a way to be together both on and off the clock is something she wants, too, watching Oliver hurry back into his room and throw on some jeans and a black v-neck sweater. "Car's leaving in ten minutes," he calls over the sound of the rushing water as he prepares to brush his teeth.

"It's my car!" she protests from her ensuite, leaning against the jamb and watching him in the adjacent bathroom, breathing in the beauty and grace and definition of him in her space.

She'll never tell him this, but she'd known even then she wouldn't leave after he found Walter. Because what they were doing was far more than one man, or even one arrow. They were a team.

They were a family.

And now they were getting a long-awaited addition.

Oliver pulled on an olive green coat and zipped it up, and she chose a winter white cableknit sweater. "You're not going to be cold?"

She rolls her eyes, but there's still a sparkle in them, and she knows he sees it. She revels in the freedom to tease him like this "I'll be fine, Mom."

It's been…different having Oliver under her roof. She hadn't hesitated when she'd mentioned he had no place to go; she had a spare room with about four thousand computer parts strewn about (he just couldn't open the closet as a result – not that she minds clearing out a drawer or two for him in her own dresser, because there's something sort of permanent, comforting; the antithesis of the world they live in and are trying so hard to change.)

She reaches for their wallets and her car keys, trying to curtail his snatching them first, but of course, he's faster and grabs her about the waist to stop her forward momentum.

(She wonders briefly if he'll ever know just how much she wanted to propel straight into him.

He answers the unasked question, and she swallows visibly and something settles low and hot in her stomach when his eyes dart to her mouth and the grip on her hips tighten.

This dance they do is an interesting one; they know which steps they want to take, and that the beat keeping them just outside arms' length is slow, agonizingly so.)

He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear – even though she's pretty sure she didn't have a flyaway, and she leans into his touch just slightly. He is warm and safe and it's what helps get her up in the morning.

(The smell and sound of coffee and bacon every morning don't hurt, either. The first time he tried to use her waffle iron, however…she's still not sure what came over her to lean up on her bare tiptoes and maneuver herself to place her chin on his shoulder, lips mumbling against the skin on the back of his neck. Something hitched in him then, and the spoon had fallen to the counter with a clatter, but it had been some time before Felicity realized that Oliver had covered his hand on hers , which rested on his stomach, and that he'd shivered in…anticipation?

Maybe the beat _was_ on.)

Since that day, they're more tactile with each other; more approachable. They've had those talks when they say nothing at all, just passing the carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream between them. He's explained the off-side rule in hockey a hundred times, but she'll never tell she got it on the first try; she just loves seeing him so passionate about something that doesn't involve arrows and quivers.

On the rare nights they have off, they curl up on the couch, and inevitably her head starts to droop as sleep takes hold. He always shifts around to make sure her head rests on his shoulder, and the last few times, as she's falling slowly and soundlessly into a deep sleep, she swears she's heard his voice calling her from above: _I mean it. I love you._

Shaking herself from her reverie, she double checks she has chargers for electronics, cell phones and the like. Oliver's already at the front door shoehorning his feet into his loafers. They stop short in the foyer when they see it's raining pretty steadily. "Crap," Felicity mutters under her breath. "I'll be right back.'

He grabs her wrist when she turns to head back upstairs to get an umbrella. "I'm in if you're in."

Something tells her he's not just talking about dodging raindrops.

She nods and smiles and he shrugs out of the coat, holding it above his head. She's tucked neatly against his side, and it's naïve to think, given everything they've endured, that this is how dreams should fold quietly, simply, into reality. The quiet moments tend to be the ones that speak the loudest: the relief she feels when his key turns in the lock every day, him stealing her phone ostensibly to add something to the grocery list but instead leaves her borderline inappropriate jokes just to make her smile.

(He doesn't have to try, though. He just does).

He tents his coat above his head and the two of them make a run for it, and forget the fact that it's quarter til five and normal people are asleep, she still has to laugh, because he's still in there. Her Oliver, not the one who didn't tell them about the Mirakuru, the one who didn't sleep with Isabel Rochev; the Oliver that makes sure upon penalty of death that when they order Thai for lunch, they know not to put peanuts anywhere near her order. Her Oliver is the one that came with her to the hospital when her friend Catherine restarted chemo, and he took her daughter Riley out for lunch and a movie. Her Oliver's the one that's bruised and bloodied but never broken, and she's proud of him for that.

She loves him for that, and as the rain beats down on them in absolution, she realizes she wants to tell him.

Despite the torrential rain pounding absolution into them, she turns and rests her back against the car, out of the reach of the protective coat. Ever so slowly, giving him any time to run away, she leans forward.

It's everything she wished and nothing she expected. He threads a hand through her hair and a water droplet falls off the jacket over her head and makes her shiver. That allows him to bend his knees a little and brace one hand on the car, laving and loving and her heart beats out _home, home, home._

Her cell phone chimes in her pocket, and he groans, resting his forehead against hers. She smiles, giving him one last peck before answering. "John? Is everything okay?"

"Where the hell are you guys? She's starting to push!"

"On our way." Felicity chucks the keys at Oliver and he throws her a questioning look. "I timed it eleven minutes and twenty seconds, hitting all lights and stop signs. See if you can beat me."

(He can't.

But tonight, that doesn't matter.)

Michael Robert Diggle comes screaming into the world after about an hour of pushing, and Felicity stands at the head of Lyla's bed while the boys keep to themselves for a moment in the corner.

Oliver pats Digg on the back. "Congrats, man." He shakes his head. "It's kind of hard to believe."

"What, that I'm responsible enough to be a father?"

Oliver snorts softly in amusement. "That there are so many good days, and sometimes, they actually outnumber the bad."

Diggle follows his gaze to Felicity and Lyla, the former looking absolutely terrified at the prospect of holding the newborn, and Oliver finds himself coming up from behind her and strengthening her arms so she feels more steady.

She is steady, though; she is a saint and a sinner and absolution and second chances and final answers. And he's starting to realize that it's not that he can't do this without her, it's that he doesn't want to.

He looks out the window then, and smiles at the cliché – for as much as it is one, it's still beautiful – and dawn is breaking and a faint rainbow is forming in the distance.

A brand new day indeed.


	17. Atlantis

_Author's Notes: Written for the Olicity Summer Hiatus Project. The prompt was an AU free-for-all._

_Space: the final frontier._

* * *

"Do you ever get tired of looking at it?"

It's 3AM. She should be home, in bed. Like a normal person.

(_His_ bed, if he had a preference.

Then again, she is the most remarkable person he's ever met, so maybe normalcy is just a tad overrated.)  
He starts to make his way back to the launch door to confirm the locked and loaded status, refusing to acknowledge that he knows her well enough now that he doesn't need to ask for clarification.

He grabs the corner of the module and pulls himself into the alcove holding what she'd termed his bow and arrow – in actuality an updated version of the thirteen mile tether Atlantis and Columbia had attempted to launch in the early '90s. It feels fitting, then, that they'll be launching on the third night of Hannukah, when the sun is in orbit in Sagitarrius, the archer, because for as much as the million dollar grants and NASA training, she's the one thing that's gotten him through; his own connection back to Earth.

People, really, after the death of his best friend.

There's a part of him, for all the science and starbursts, that considers her his own Atlantis; the thing rumored to exist but that he never really believed in.  
It is always dark where he is, but there's something in her – not just her voice, but her entire spirit; an inner light so bright he wonders if it could ever be harnessed – that makes him float even more than zero gravity and weightlessness.

"No," he finally answers, adjusting his headset when the third sunrise of the day rotates through and crackles the transmission for a moment. "It makes you feel big and little at the same time. That never gets old."

"I'll bet." A pause, then a quiet sip of what he knows is coffee. He groans, and he hears the huff of amused laughter. "Sorry," she says, tone completely unrepentant.

"You're a terrible person, Dr. Smoak."

"Thank you, Dr. Queen." He can hear her smile and for once is glad she isn't there to see his. He feels like he's in grade school again and Mandy Henning, gorgeous brunette captain of the Starling City Prep cheer squad and future ex-wife of its quarterback, just walked in the door to babysit him and his sister; he's floating in space – doing actual rocket science, for God's sake – and he's unable to talk to a girl without a stupid grin on his face and butterflies in his stomach.

He triple checks the calibration, pulling himself along like he's climbing a ladder, waiting to speak as he hears shuffling on the other side of the line. He knows she's probably slipped off her shoes and pulled her knees to her chest as she goes over the solar sunrise reports, equally bright colored nails sticking out from beneath her skirt and a Starbucks cup – something he craves, second only to how he wants her; to join him for dinner, forever, her pick – at her elbow. She goes quiet for a minute, and he wonders if he's lost her.

(He ignores the panic in his stomach at the mere thought; how do you find someone again when you never had them in the first place?

Theoretical is a big part of their working lives; things only a handful of people would try to understand, and all for their own reasons, even if they came together for the greater good in the end.

He's tired of theoretical; tired of the _what ifs_ and the _say whens._)

He swallows and clears his throat, actually starting a bit when she comes back on the line with worry catching in her voice. "Oliver? Are you okay?"

"Fine," he rushes to assure her. "Everything's fine. I just, uh…" He takes a deep breath, stutters over what used to be a perfectly simple – and often expertly executed – transition into the possibility of something more, and hangs his head; Tommy would be doubled over laughing right now if he saw how uncool Oliver Queen was playing the game they'd both perfected. "You got any plans after the holidays?"

"Not really," she says, voice relaxing as the conversation starts up again and he proves himself sound. "I'm covering Christmas, of course, so everyone can be at home with their kids, and that'll max me out on overtime until the New Year, so I'll be off the rest of the week. Gonna hang with my girls Sarah, Alison and Cosima."

He doesn't recognize the names. "Your sisters?"

The burst of laughter makes him physically startle, and his heart races even faster for a second. The woman was going to kill him. "Felicity?"

"I forget you've spent the last five years in training modules and planning sessions," she manages, and he starts laughing along with her, amused by her merriment. "They're characters on a TV show."

He laughs genuinely after that. "It any good?"

"Only the best thing ever." She waits a beat and then ventures, "You could always come over and we can binge watch it together. I think you'd really like it."

The stupid grin amplifies. Somehow, he manages to keep his voice even. "I'd like that."

"So would I," she says softly, and then says, "It's time."

There's shuffling on both ends as he moves toward what Felicity termed the Lido deck: a small porthole toward the front of the ship where the other members of his team will monitor him during his spacewalk. He positions himself in front of it, moving almost like he's treading water, and he hears the beeps of her pass code and FOB keys as she makes her way outside.

"Three," she begins, "two…one."

He waves down toward Earth, knowing she's doing the same thing on terra firma, and for once in his life, he can't wait to get home.

(When he lands the shuttle ten days later, she's the one that guides him in:_come on home, Oliver._

It's again fitting, for that same night, she invites him into her house and her heart, and it, not the billions of miles of uncharted territory and precipice discoveries, is the one place he never wants to leave.)

fin


	18. left of center

_Author's Notes: Written for the Olicity Summer Hiatus Challenge; trope: break his heart to save him trope._

_Still not canon compliant._

* * *

He finds the bomber, delivers him to Lance's doorstep and then proceeds to hers.

Despite the stitches on her head and the ache in both her body and her heart, she meets his smile, feeling the tips of her ears burn when he leans down to brush his mouth against her temple. She stands aside wordlessly and lets him in, feeling his presence behind her as they walk up the short staircase to her living room as she does whether he's in the room or not – heavy, pressing, weighted.

This time, though, it hurts.

It – _they_ – have barely started, and yet she somehow knows this is going to be the most painful thing she ever does.

"You want some tea, or…?" she finds herself asking, fidgeting like she hasn't done since the night she found him in the back of her car and he found his way into every facet of her life.

He shakes his head and she motions to the couch. He's the epitome of relaxed, and she the antithesis; it feels as off-kilter as they've ever been, and she takes a deep breath when he takes her hand in his, trying to steady and prepare herself, but it comes out a hiss.

The gentle concern radiates off him in waves and instead of comfort brings tears to her eyes; she's wanted him to care like this for longer than she hasn't, but for all the words she's going to say, it's his that have been rattling around in her head.

_Because of the life that I lead…_

Because in the end, it will always be about that life, and the lives – plural – he saves living it. And it's not just the nameless, faceless citizenry, either. It's Diggle, a soldier without a battlefield; Roy, a tornado in a canyon; Sara, an angel with her demons.

Her, isolated in uncertainty, positioned left of center.

They'd been flying so high, Daedalus and Icarus and wings made of equal parts wax and blind hope; Lance was off their trail, Laurel had been read in and working interference with the DA's office, and Oliver had taken back QC – at least emotionally speaking – by rallying the troops like a seasoned general. He'd asked her to dinner and she'd said yes with a certainty rivaled only by a spark of tomorrow that maybe one day he'd ask her another question, this time with jewelry and on bended knee, to which her answer would be the same.

And then her world had literally exploded out from beneath her.

She looks at the traffic cam footage of him carrying her back to the lair only once before she scrubs it, and it's when she sees the lines of police cars and ambulances racing to the scene of the bombing and him walking in the opposite direction that she realizes it's she who has a choice to make.

She wants to try this with him, she doesn't doubt that. She wants this; wants _him._

Starling City, however, _needs_ him.

Starling needs the Arrow more than she needs Oliver Queen.

He'd had to make an impossible choice once, and now it was her turn to do the unthinkable.

She doesn't realize she's crying until he wipes a tear off her cheek with his thumb, and her eyes fall shut, leaning into his touch. When she lifts her gaze back to him, there's a sad resignation in the lines the exhaustion has etched onto his face, and her prepared speech disappears beneath an effortless, understanding silence.

"I'm sorry," she rasps out, and he shakes his head.

"I understand," he replies quietly, and she's glad one of them does, because this noble thing is for the birds. Birds she doesn't like, like that robin that perched beneath her dorm room sophomore year during finals week that she tried to shoo with a fly swatter she ended up dropping three floors.

She lets him pull her to him and feels his chuckle more than hears it, realizing she said that out loud. He rests his cheek on the crown of her head and then presses his lips to her hair, murmuring, "Whatever you have to do to be happy, Felicity, I want you to do it."

He holds her that night, just for a little while, and lets himself out quietly after she falls asleep on the couch.

In the days and weeks and months that follow, he's still in her periphery, always there if she needs him even as she tries to move forward (but interestingly, never _on_), and later, after he does go down on bended knee and she does say yes again – and, as she suspected, it's even better than the first go around – she tells him that of all the things he's done for other people, the best thing he'd ever done for her was give her that time and that space, because it confirmed that the only place she was supposed to be was at his side.


	19. shock wave

_Author's Notes: Written for theirhappystory on Tumblr. Prompt: body shots._

_Rated PG-13, maybe R, depending on your sensitivities._

* * *

She's dressed in the shortest of short skirts, the most cropped of all the tops in the world, and black stilettos with a hell as high and sharp as her desire to shed them in favor of her panda flats. The glass and steel of the bar behind her presses into every inch of exposed skin as she leans against it, eyes flitting between the few pockets of light the alternating blue and white filtered strobes are illuminating, her concentration not on the reverberating bass thrumming through the club.

She's been undercover at Avenue, one of the first places to reopen since Slade's siege against the city, for a little over two weeks. Laurel had tipped them off to a string of identity thefts and grand larceny, whereby wealthy patrons were being targeted by members of the staff, taken into back rooms for a little "off-the-menu" tasting, served spiked liquor and robbed blind while they were passed out. The DA's office had been able to tie some of the stolen identities being used as aliases for members of a small syndicate out of Gotham that was apparently trying to establish itself in Starling.

Felicity had never thought her unemployment and the family business of cocktail waitressing would ever work to her advantage, but then again, Oliver Queen did have a way of turning her world on its axis.

(She shouldn't read so much into the fact that he'd seen her weaknesses as strength; that for the first time in her life, things she'd seen as defeats were seen as a victory.

He'd seen the worst parts of her and still found them worthy; things that had bankrupted her somehow struck him as valuable – commendable, even.

She shouldn't, but she does.)

She glances over at him, situated in the VIP lounge with a drink in one hand and a very insistent brunette near the other, and has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Just as he knows every part of her –figuratively speaking, though she swears she's caught him rubbing his fingers together whenever he's near her, and she'll be damned if he wasn't, instead of yearning for his bow, itching to touch _her_ – she's come to be able to read him like an open book, and right now, in size 72 bolded Arial font, he's screaming his desperation for this mission to end.

He meets her gaze from across the room, and despite the dimness and the din, she swears she sees something flicker in his eyes. His eyes rake over her not for the first time that night – it had been the first time he'd seen her in her new work clothes, as he'd previously only monitored her from a nearby surveillance van, and she'd always been changed into more casual, comfy clothing by the time he'd show up on her doorstep to discuss the intel she'd gathered each night.

It had started feeling, though, like it wasn't the mission he wanted to debrief. Not even close.

Being around Oliver has always felt like a live wire, lightning bolts trapped in hollows, but ever since her amicable split with Ray, the charge is even more electric; pulses and possibilities. She wants to fall blindly, willfully into the shock wave, but something's keeping her grounded, and it's frustrating her beyond belief that she – the one who babbles – can't put it into words.

Maybe it's because they live minute by minute, in the past and the present but never fully in the future, and the unknown is as dangerous as it is undefined. Maybe it's because they've lived on a precipice for so long that she's forgotten how to jump with her heart forward instead of headfirst. Maybe because they've both forgotten not only how to tell a happy story, but also make one of their own.

Maybe because there's no good answer to _what do you do when you have everything you've ever wanted?_

Because she does. Want him, on the most basic, primal levels. But she also wants him on a deeper, emotional level – Marianas Trench deep – and though he'd seemed willing to open up during their ill-fated date, she'd wondered – still does, in fact – if she was ready to take all he had to give. For as much as she'd never been intimidated by him –intrigued, yes; attracted to, without question – this daunts her; overwhelms her. This is a lesson learned only by experience; it cannot be trained for, either on a salmon ladder or a campus in Cambridge, and she's never done well on those sorts of tests.

Her attention is diverted by Paige, one of the other bartenders. "Boss wants to see you in the office."

Felicity nods, pushing herself off the bar. She can almost feel the heat in his gaze as he follows her, and damn if she doesn't accentuate the swing of her hips a little more than she probably needs to.

She runs her hands through her hair, adding a little bit of the volume she'd put in when she was styling it earlier in the evening, and knocks on the door, waiting until the voice behind it calls, "Come in."

She offers a small smile. "You wanted to see me?"

The brunette woman in front of her never lifts her pen or eyes from the papers scattered across the dress. "How long have you been working here, Felicity?"

"It'll be two weeks tomorrow."

A half-interested nod and hum. Then, "And how do you think it's been going so far?"

The slowness of the conversation has her a little bit on edge, but she tamps it down as best she can. Avery Markham's been the woman behind the curtain for the Sosa gang, calling all the shots and doing some of the shooting herself. She is someone who does not give second chances; steel and strength and the ability not just to bend someone, but to break them without so much as breaking a sweat. Thankfully, Felicity's voice is far more steady than she feels. "I think I've been doing well."

Avery finally looks up at her, brow raised in interest, clearly having expected Felicity to instead ask how the club owner thought she was performing, deferring to her power position. She leans back in her chair, and Felicity watches as her hand disappears beneath her desk. She soundlessly evens out her breathing even as her heartbeat thrums louder than the music beyond the office walls, knowing of the .40 caliber the woman kept hidden behind the wood, thanks to the surveillance device she'd been able to plant during her interview. "Do you now?"

Felicity nods. "I've seen a lot of return customers, and I regularly get twice the tips the other bartenders do."

Avery chuckles, a wry smile on her face. "Yeah, they mentioned that. Not too pleased with you, are they?"

Felicity tries to seem nonchalant, shrugging. "To be honest, Ms. Markham, that's not my problem; it's theirs."

"Here to make money and not friends, eh?" It turns out to be a rhetorical question, because Avery lets her Mont Blanc pen drop to the desk. "I like that in a person, doubly so an employee."

Felicity smiles. "I'm glad."

Avery rises from her chair and crosses to stand in front of Felicity, leaning against the desk and crossing her legs at the ankles. "How would you like to make a little extra?"

Felicity nods her interest, and the other woman returns the gesture subtly, then walks to the other side of the office, reaching above her own wet bar and pulling an expensive bottle of tequila from one of the shelves. "Go make a friend or two. Offer them this." She hands over the bottle and Felicity studies it before raising her eyes to Avery's. "You get ten percent of whatever I can collect."

Felicity nods again and Avery motions for her to leave. Once the office door is shut behind her, Felicity exhales shakily, swallowing hard before finally steadying herself and returning to the main room.

She spots Oliver still in the VIP area, and sees that the brunette from earlier has apparently introduced her blonde BFF, for the newcomer is situated on Oliver's right, her hand on his knee as she speaks to him. Several women on the floor aren't letting the velvet rope stop them trying to pique his interest.

He's got his arms spread across the top of the booth he's sitting in, careful not to touch anyone or anything, looking more than disinterested, Felicity notes; it's almost as if he's uncomfortable with the attention being paid to him – particularly when his own is clearly elsewhere, as his eyes are searching the floor for someone.

No. Not someone.

Her.

(Oh, how things change.

How she likes them to.)

She leans against the wall as she watches the brunette run her finger from the tip of Oliver's hand all the way up his arm, the physical contact finally forcing his gaze to her. Felicity adopts a stance eerily similar to the one the mafiosa had adopted just minutes ago as she watches the other woman lean in and whisper something into his ear, hand dropping to his upper thigh. He looks from her grasp back to her face and back again, but on the way, he locks eyes with Felicity, and it's show time.

Except it's so much more than that.

Instantly, the sparks those girls are trying to throw are engulfed by the conflagration of a connection reestablished – this time, it's not unthinkable, it's undeniable – enflamed by the heady heat in his eyes, clearly seen with their closer proximity, as he takes in how the skirt and shoes make her legs go on forever. She tousles her hair again, the movement pulling the fabric of her shirt up even further, exposing a tantalizing strip of milky white skin. She bends her arm at the elbow, cradling her head in her hand, and she can see him strain, muttering something under his breath when she licks her lips.

She takes that as her cue, turning around and heading back to the bar for a moment. She gathers some salt, shot glasses and limes, and, after checking that the coast is clear, switches out the drugged bottle for a clean one. More conscious of her own kinesthetics than she's ever been, she saunters over, smiling her thanks at the security guard as he lets her pass.

(What happens next is not her proudest moment.

It will also be the catalyst for many more important moments, which is why she will never regret it.)

She bends over, putting the tray on the table, lifting her eyes but not her body so that he's got a decent view down the front of her shirt. "On the house," she says in a low, sultry tone – at least, that's what she's going for, even if this is feeling less and less like pretend – but makes no move to leave.

(After all, what's the point in her running when all roads led her back to him?)

The brunette huffs. "Thank you," she says in a bitingly dismissive tone.

Oliver holds up a hand and tries to extricate himself from the physicality surrounding him. "Just a minute," he says, just a hint of playboy lasciviousness in his tone, but that's not what Felicity notices; not what resonates most in between the cracks of electricity in the air, so sharp and effusive she can taste it on the back of her tongue. Instead, it's the way his pupils are widening and contracting, the little hitch in his breath that give him away, that tell her he's tired of pretending, too, because in the walk from the wall to his side, that place she didn't realize was home until she'd left it, she'd reaffirmed he is her truth in a world of lies.

She knows his tells because they're no longer anteing up.

They're all in.

It's becoming harder and harder to remember why they're even in this place, that they have a job to do, because finally, _finally_, their lives can be about unstoppable forces and not immovable objects. They are collision, cohesion; synchronicity among the scars.

But they _do_ have a job to do, and she wants – _needs_ – to do it well, because after that, they'll finally have the time to jump off that ledge that no longer feels like the end of the road but instead the beginning of a path they can and will traverse together. She quirks a brow, waiting for him to continue. Instead, he reaches and unscrews the cap to the bottle, pouring a shot for himself and her. She barely hears the disdainful _tsk_ of the brunette beside him; doesn't feel how the room shifts when the other women realize they've just been outdone by the help.

(He'll tell her later they never stood a chance.

He should know, because when it comes to Felicity Smoak, neither did he.)

She picks up the shot and raises it, toasting him wordlessly, but then acts on a wicked impulse, capturing his forearm gently when he reaches for the salt shaker. She puts her own shot down on the table and sprinkles the grains along the pulse point of her wrist, and then slowly and deliberately extends her arm to him.

He doesn't blink and she barely breathes as he catches her wrist and drags his tongue along the line of salt dotting her skin. She can't suppress a shiver, and her full lips part as he tosses the shot back and chases it with the lime, never once letting go of her hand.

It's like the air's gone out of the room, but it's also the biggest breath she's ever taken. Her stomach clenches in anticipation and appreciation, and she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth when he finally releases her, motioning to her shot.

She smiles sweetly at the blonde on his right, who lets out a disgusted sigh but moves nonetheless. She sits and then tilts his chin away from her, exposing his neck. She pours the salt and goes in for the kill.

She can feel his pulse, steady and strong, beneath her lips, and for a moment drops the bravado, eyes sliding shut as she thinks, not for the first time, how close she's come to losing him, both as the Arrow and Oliver Queen. She brushes her nose against his cheek and his hand finds her knee, rubbing soothingly in silent affirmation and reassurance. She licks up the column of his throat, feeling more than hearing his sharp intake of breath, and then downs the shot, wincing just a little bit as it burns. She sucks on a lime before discarding the rind, and after placing a hot kiss behind his ear, she stands, gathers the salt and limes, and heads down the three short steps to the main floor, tossing an inviting look over her shoulder.

(It seems to take him forever to get to her.

The symbolism is not lost on her.)

When he's finally at her side, his hand slides to her hip, pulling her tightly against him, hands burning the exposed skin at the small of her back. He nuzzles her hair out of his way as she guides them to one of the private rooms, and his hoarse whisper is broken in the best of ways. "You're killing me here."

She turns, resting her forehead against his and smiles genuinely then, that same smile she gave him the night of the date that never was and yet fundamentally changed everything, and he returns it so earnestly and fully that her chest contracts. And then his lips are on hers, strong and all-consuming, hand sliding through her hair and cupping the back of her neck to hold her closer.

As she does – will always do – she meets him halfway, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling their bodies flush against one another. He groans, and she takes the opportunity to slide her tongue alongside his.

He nearly drops the bottle of tequila but eventually fumbles for, and finds, a ledge behind him. As soon as the glass hits the counter, his palms are spread over her back and he's holding onto her for dear life, and it most certainly will be one if she's allowed to kiss him like this.

Necessity pulls them apart after another minute or two, and she's left panting and tingling from head to toe. Oliver seems just as shattered, and she half-groans, half-whimpers when he whispers, "I want you so fucking much right now."

"You have me," she finally manages, and the next kiss is painfully gentle because they both know they're not just talking about tonight.

They still have to finish what they've started here, though, before they can resume that which has been waiting for so long – something that, deep in her bones she knows started before he ever came into her crucible with a shot up laptop and a shit lie – and she guides him to the couch set up in the room. He tosses his wallet on the side table, lined with credit and debit cards they'll be able to track once they're cloned, and pulls her onto his lap, holding her by the waist while she pours them another drink.

This time the salt goes across her chest, and his stubble burns in the best possible way. She cradles his head to her, and he dots kisses up to her collarbone and then around her shoulder, pausing on the scar she has from the night Tockman shot her. He runs his thumb over the puckered skin and then raises his eyes to hers, searching for forgiveness he never needed to ask for.

She kisses him again softly, reverence and sanctity, and then leans back enough to be able to grab the hem of his black t-shirt. She pulls it over his head and runs her nails lightly down his abdomen. He's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, not scars or stories, but survival. She places a kiss over his heart, and then with a mischievous glint in her eye, curls herself so she can sprinkle the salt closer to his navel. She watches him carefully when she lowers her mouth to his abs, a little bolt of pride sliding across her backbone when he clenches his fist in the leather of the couch. She tosses back the shot, making a face again as he swallows, and he chuckles.

She shrugs, but the smile on her face is bright. "I prefer wine."

His fingertips skirt up and down her bare arms and she shivers. "You know, the contents of the wine cellar were one of the few things I kept from the house."

"I do remember hearing something about that," she says, a playful lilt to her voice.

"I don't suppose you'd like to arrange a private tasting." He leans forward, nipping at her earlobe. "We have to find out which is the best complement to how _you_ taste."

She groans, undulating gently against him. "_So_ not playing fair."

He turns serious for a minute, cupping her cheeks and moving her head gently back so he's looking her straight in the eye. "You know this isn't a game, right? It never was."

She smiles, leans forward and kisses him again, pouring everything she's felt but left unsaid over the last three years. He smiles against her mouth, and she feels him relax beneath her. "Though," he murmurs, lips still touching hers, "if it _was_, I'd say I won. Big Time."

"Is this where I start playing 'We Are the Champions'?"

He laughs outright and she grins fully and playfully. "It's appropriate on so many levels, though!" she insists, and he pulls her back to him, and her heart soars when he mutters, "I love you so much."

"Then please pretend to pass out so we can get out of here."

In the end, they put a stop to the bad guys, but more importantly, they put a start to them.

fin


	20. a place to land

_Author's Notes: Second verse, same as the first: written in August for mylunarsolstice on Tumblr's birthday, so it's not canon compliant. _

_One of these days I'll get my act together and post things in a timely manner. You have my sincerest apologies in the interim._

* * *

When the pieces finally fall into place, it's Barry Allen that Oliver will be indebted to for the rest of his life.

They've been living at a hundred miles an hour, chasing his sister and QC even though they know there's nothing faster than the speed of their leaving. He pushes himself to the brink, and it's Felicity that pulls him back from the precipice when he gets too close to falling.

(The irony is, it's those months with her - sleeping in her guest room, waking up to her singing songs from her teenage years [he'd had "Mmbop" stuck in his head for three days after that] as she makes coffee, pouring her some wine and sitting out on the small porch that leads to her backyard, her smile brighter than the super moon above them - that causes him to tumble head over heels.)

They start and stop a few times, tripping over both the newness and the inevitability. There are a few dinners where her foot slides up his calf and his fingers lace with hers; a few walks back to the car where his arm is around her shoulder and hers is banded about his waist, thumb hooked through a belt loop.

(There's one or two really, _really_ great makeout sessions on the couch where he looks up at her, sitting in his lap, flushed and fiery from his mouth on hers, and wonders if this is his true welcome home from purgatory and perdition.)

They're put on hold when Sara tracks Thea down, though he collapses to his knees in disbelief and relief, and she crouches with him, holding him to her and murmuring words against his temple. He all but crushes her to him, this remarkable woman who's put so much poetry into his pain; has made it bearable.

Has reminded him that it's not enough to just be alive. He has to _live._

Has made him realize there's only one person he wants to do that with.

(He just looks at her, because there are no words.

She understands anyway.

That's good, because he's really not sure how he'll ever thank her.)

They focus on Thea for awhile and then turn their attentions back to QC. It takes close to a year, but they're able to salvage at least part of it, and when Walter calls to tell them they've been successful, Oliver picks Felicity up and twirls her, reveling in the laughter echoing in his ears and the way his heart seems to be beating out her name in tribute and in thanks.

He puts her down and kisses her forehead, then says in a low, husky whisper, "Have dinner with me."

She chuckles. "We have dinner together every night."

He opens his eyes and looks down at her, shaking his head at the teasing glint in her eye and slight smirk on her face, even as his heart races a little bit at the hope that's just coming off her in waves. "I meant like a date."

"A date-date?" she replies, lacing their fingers together, and he's back in that restaurant with that deafening terror when he screamed her name and heard nothing but silence, saw nothing but darkness, but when she tugs on his hand, brings him back to her - because he will always find his way home - he relaxes. "We survived," she says softly. "And we're still back ."

(There's no place he'd rather be.)

"Is that a yes?" he finally asks, and she grins, nodding.

"Gotta make you work for it," she teases, but there's a heaviness that settles at the base of his spine when he realizes there is nothing he wants to dedicate all his time and energy to more.

So he calls Barry Allen, asks to hire The Flash out for the night, because Digg's at home with the baby, Roy's with Thea, and Oliver refuses to be interrupted.

The Flash watches over Starling while Oliver Queen realizes all his Arrow training and previous relationship experience can't prepare him for falling in love with his best friend.

(It's okay, though; she's always been a place to land.)

They end up in his old office in QC, and he watches as she walks to the window and surveys the city; coming together; not whole just yet, but not as broken either.

(She slides her fingers into his after he joins her, and then he tugs her to his side, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, because the look of pride on her face isn't just for Starling; it's for him as well.)

He's still financially unstable, so their dinner is Kraft Easy Mac and a bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's. It's the complete antithesis of what he'd planned for them when they reached this point, what they'd started on that ill-fated date two last chances ago, and yet somehow it works. They don't need linens and fine china and sommeliers (well, yes, they do, she argues, and he tries to make a list of all her favorite wines as she rattles them off before deciding she pretty much just wants to drink all the red wine in the world. He's fine with that for as long as she's willing to have her at his side. Where she belongs.)

They don't need candles or roaming violinists or three forks whose use needs to be deciphered.

They just need to sit shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, body warmth and the scent of her perfume wafting toward his nose, as close physically as they have been emotionally for longer than either had realized.

They just need each other.

That night, the only thing burning in Starling City is his kiss on her mouth and her hand in his as she leads him to her bedroom.


	21. shatter me

_Author's Notes: Prompt from releaseurinhibitions on Tumblr: "Daddy, why do you have green paint on your face?"_

_Title from the Lindsey Stirling/Lzzy Hale song of the same name._

* * *

"Daddy, why do you have green paint on your face?"

Automatically, his hands go to his face, and sure enough, there's a little grease paint left alongside the exhaustion in his eyes. He rolls it on his fingertips as his stomach does the same; it's because of that mantle, because of that mission, that his son was put in danger tonight.

From the other side of the hospital bed, just as she did for Connor tonight, Felicity saves him. "Don't worry about it, bud," she says in that soothing, healing voice, one that should feel wrong in a world of cutting, broken glass but that both Queen boys cling to nonetheless. She runs a hand over his head, centering both herself and Oliver in the knowledge that the boy's okay.

This boy he almost lost tonight, so soon after he'd learned of his existence in the first place.

Oliver's hands still shake by his side as he tries to slow down his heart rate and his breathing, watching Felicity calm his son, this child that she too has grown to love. She pulls out Connor's gaming system from her bag and despite his ordeal, the little boy smiles, eventually jabbering on about which level he's close to completing, leaning ever closer to Felicity until he puts his head on her shoulder and his eyes begin to droop.

She doesn't hesitate, and unbearably gently, slides him over in the hospital bed he'll be sleeping in tonight just for observation, and then pulls herself onto the mattress. Oliver hears the clatter of her shoes on the floor as she toes them off, and she maneuvers herself against the pillows, pulling Connor safely and closely against her side. She reaches down and covers both of them with the blanket, pressing a light kiss against his forehead.

(He's still too shaken to breathe in their connection as he normally does. She'd been almost as shocked as Oliver when Connor's mother showed up at his door, but she'd never once looked at either of them differently. Instead, she'd pulled out her tablet, downloaded some game, and proceeded to sit with Connor on the couch for hours while Oliver and his one-time love interest hashed everything out.

Connor had, of course, fallen in love with Felicity from the word go.

Like father, like son.)

She holds out a hand to Oliver, and it's mostly on instinct that he moves, coming to sit in the seat she's just vacated. She laces their fingers together, and he leans forward, resting his forehead against hers.

"He's okay, Oliver," she whispers fiercely. "You got to him in time, and he's okay."

He shakes his head vehemently, nausea sliding through him, circling and coiling around his failures. "You found him in time."

"Look at me." She tugs on his hand. "Look at me."

He raises his eyes to hers, and her expression softens. She cups and caresses his cheek. "You saved him, Oliver. You saved all of us."

(The doubts have never pierced him this sharply before, but oh, how he wants her to make him believe.)

He doesn't find words for a long time after that, nor does he find sleep. Instead, he watches as two of the most important people in his life rest, their hands linked and his on top of them, wondering how he'll ever get over the fact that despite his intent and efforts and training, he'll never truly be able to keep them safe.


	22. strangers in a strange land

_Prompt from boofadil on Tumblr: "All she really remembers about being six is the way her father always smelled like Turkish Gold cigarettes and how soft her old hand-me-down purple and orange Popple was._

_Set in the same 'verse as "Say You'll Haunt Me."_

* * *

All she really remembers about being six is the way her father always smelled like Turkish Gold cigarettes and how soft her old hand-me-down purple and orange Popple was.

She doesn't remember the lines on his face or how the sunlight picks up the hint of gold in his blue eyes — her eyes, as a matter of fact. And yet here she is staring at them, staring at him, standing right next to Oliver, her past and future colliding.

She rises slowly from the chaise on which she's been sitting, sliding her sunglasses down her nose. Her brain is whirring to a stop awaiting a hard reset, and her breath gets caught on the remnants of her childhood, lost when she lost him.

She's seen a lot of things in her twenty-eight years; done even more. But this is something she just can't process. It's bad code, indecipherable jargon, and she's no idea how to translate it.

(She'll learn later that not everyone can find the words like she can, like she and Oliver do; sometimes there just aren't any.)

Oliver moves to her side when she instinctively puts a protective hand on her stomach, and she feels steadier with his hand in hers, but she remains stunned into silence for a long moment, looking her father up and down and wondering which one of them is actually the stranger in a strange land.

(It'll turn out that they both are.)

She feels her facade crack a little when Sam finally speaks, voice wavering. "You're so beautiful."

The question spills out of her mouth like a detonation. "How are you here?"

He smiles a little, and another memory comes unbidden: her first baseball game and a treat at the seventh inning stretch: ice cream in a plastic hat, one she held on to until she was a teenager and the talisman became too much. "I live here. Part of the time, anyway."

Her hand tightens over Oliver's then, because the inevitability in the circumstance overwhelms her like the waves crashing onto the shore not twenty yards from where she's standing. He shifts, taking his left hand from her grip and, turning, slips in his right, moving his other fingers to the back of her neck and rubbing slightly, knowing those caresses in that spot center her when she's most off-kilter. She swallows a few times, mind having gone blank as to where to go from here; asking herself if she even wants to go.

"Oliver tells me congratulations are in order," her father says gently. "That's wonderful."

She looks down at where her wedding set lies just above her belly button and on the swell that's just starting to become noticeable. She already feels so much for her child, this miracle she and Oliver have made, and already can't imagine her life without her baby. When she looks up at Sam, she sees the pain he's trying to hide behind his smile — it's one she deciphered a long time ago, just after "Felicity Smoak? Hi, I'm Oliver Queen." — and it's that which releases the tension in her chest. She sees the remorse, sees the lost last chances, and in his silence, she hears the request for forgiveness he doesn't feel worthy of.

(They do say girls tend to marry boys that remind them of their father. She doesn't mind being a cliche this time.)

"I tried to find you," Sam confirms, and Felicity can feel the emotion welling up in her throat at the obvious suffering he's endured; it's not time but experience that's put those lines on his face. "I got custody, but you'd already moved out to Vegas. I tried to get custody there, too, but…" He scuffs his sandal through the sand. "I never forgot, Felicity. I never stopped loving you."

(She can't blame the hormones for the tears that come then.

She doesn't regret those tears, either, because for the first time in over twenty years, her father's the one to soothe them out of her.)


	23. that which the mountain brings forth

_Author's Note: Prompt from puzzledhat on Tumblr: "you're saying you didn't plan this?"_

_Title from a quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._

* * *

**that which the mountain sends forth (returns once more to the mountain)**

"You're saying you didn't plan this?"

He looks incredulously at her. "You think I planned us getting stuck in an elevator?"

She shrugs, but there's a lightness to her eyes that gives away her amusement, and it pulls back what little fight he'd had in him into nothingness. "You're the one who's been complaining all week that we haven't had more than five minutes together."

He takes a step toward where she's leaning against the wall. "So I broke down the elevator on the way to one of the most important meetings in this company's history."

Her fingers play with the edge of his tie, and it's no accident that her palm brushes against his belt buckle, and she's not disappointed when his hips readjust, coming closer to her. "You've done stupider things."

"Mmhmm." He leans down, lips skirting feather light against her jaw before he presses a kiss behind her ear, the shiver that runs through her automatically pulling his hand to her hip; the heat spreads as he widens his fingers, and he matches her smile.

Her thumbs slide through his belt loops but he still doesn't kiss her properly — because he wants to tease her, she's sure, and not because they'd agreed to keep everything between them private and out of the office. Instead, he presses his mouth to her pulse point, sucking gently, before moving to the other side. He nuzzles her earring out of the way and wraps an arm fully around her, and she puts her hand on his chest, just above his heart. She can feel it beating heavily, and somehow instinctively knows it's not borne of their intimacy.

"You're going to do great," she says, pulling her head to the side so she can look up at him. She moves her hands to smooth out his tie and jacket, the light from the yellow backlit panels that surround them bouncing off the diamond solitaire on her left hand — the first thing successfully built in their brave new world.

He looks at her with uncertainty written plainly in his features, and she presses a gentle kiss to his lips. It's become a pattern for them, whether he's clad in a business suit or his leathers; a quiet but pervasive reminder she is with him no matter where he roams, and on his weakest days, it's her strength that keeps him going.

He slides his other arm fully around her and just holds her, and she listens as his heartbeat slows. "I'm proud of you," she says quietly. "And they would be, too."

He sighs then, not out of frustration but absolution, and the tension he's been carrying in his body for days — maybe years — finally dissipates. She smiles against his chest, careful not to get any of her lipstick on him, and squeezes one final time just as the elevator car lurches slightly and begins moving again.

He walks into the boardroom with his head held high and confidence in his step, and she tells maintenance not to rush with the elevator repairs.


	24. but for the grace of god go i

When he lets himself, he feels everything.

In time, he drowns in her instead of in the mess he made; pulls himself harder and higher than any salmon ladder to make himself worthy of the man she deserves - the man she knows he could be, the man he _wants_ to be, because finally he understands it's not just Felicity who deserves his best, it's all of them, himself included.

In her absence he learns he is the kind of man he'd worked so hard to purge the city of - callous and cold in his single-minded self-preservation; a man with no plans beyond the next day's carefully calculated chess moves.

He learns he wants to plan.

He learns he wants to live.

He learns the only way he can do that - really, totally, put his heart and body and soul into it and _live_ \- is with her, because he's already given her those things.

He'd give her more if she lets him.

By the grace of god, she lets him.

In the end, gives her everything.

It's not easy. It's choppy like the seas of Lian Yu on the worst summer cyclone days when the sun disappeared into the blackness. It's shaky like the ground beneath Starling and Merlyn's earthquake machine. It's bloody and dirty and loud and _hard. _But he's survived all that before, and will do it again, time after time, because he's finally _got_ time. And there's only one person he wants to spend it with.

He asks her to marry him the day after their goddaughter is in her first holiday play at her preschool, playing Mrs. Claus. It's two in the morning, he's perched on their kitchen counter and she's babbling about Coca Cola's impact on Santa Claus imagery to distract herself as she sews stitches into his skin - ones he earned not as the Arrow, but as Oliver Queen helping run down a mugger who stole an old woman's purse during the hustle and bustle of the shopping days before Christmas - and his plans to ask her on the last night of Hanukkah fly out the window, because he doesn't feel pain in that moment, not in his hand or anywhere else, for that matter. The only thing he feels is unbridled joy spreading warmly through his chest that they're here, they're finally _here;_the way his face aches when he grins unabashedly down at her, everything good in his life; the heat of his fingers on her skin as he settles her more securely between his legs; her contented sigh on his face when he leans down and rests his forehead against hers.

The words trip coming out of his mouth, but not because he's nervous or uncertain; quite the opposite. They trip over reach other because they can't get out fast enough; can't get to _her_ fast enough. He knows the feeling well. "Marry me."

She shudders beneath his hands, sucking in a shaky breath. "Oliver -"

"I mean it." He leans back and lays everything bare; reminds her with a heavy look but a light heart that everything he is, was and ever will be is hers in their entirety. He fishes the ring out of his jeans pocket; he's been carrying it around for days for some reason; a reminder, perhaps, a remembrance of the things he could have lost forever but that came back to him somehow. He sees tears in her eyes and has to swallow back his own emotion as he slides the solitaire on her left hand. "Will you do me the honor of being my wife?"

She takes his face in hers and kisses him for all she's worth; for all _they're_ worth, and happy is the man who once bore the crown he ultimately decided was too heavy for his head. But for her, and with her, he will bear anything; feel, say and do anything.

She leads them to their bedroom, and for a little while, there is no greater sound than the band of his ring on her finger crying out in staccatoed unison with its wearer, metal against headboard.

(It's replaced by "You may now kiss the bride" some eight months later. It's another lesson she teaches him, and the first they learn together as husband and wife.

And that's the best feeling of all.)


	25. forever is our today

_Author's Notes: From an anonymous user on Tumblr: "coffee."_

_Still not canon compliant._

_Title from the Queen song /Emily West cover, "Who Wants to Live Forever."_

* * *

She comes into the foundry at 3:45 in the morning the day after her mother leaves, folding her fingers over each other like she did the time they met at a coffee shop, voice as small as he's ever heard it. "Can I -" She takes a moment to clear her throat, compose herself, and he almost winces because he's supposed to be the one who wears the masks, not her. Never her. Nonetheless, when she straightens her shoulders and looks him dead in the face and asks, "Can I still talk to you about my day?", he's nodding before the third syllable is even uttered.

(He wants so much to talk about not just today but tomorrow, whisper pleas for atonement and absolution into her skin, for she seems to be the truth, the light and the way, and he is back in a very dark purgatory without her; a hell of his own making.

He's been wrong about so many things before, but he's never felt like _he_ was the one who should've detonated in the ashes of the aftermath.

Until now.

Until _her_.

She's changed so many things; been the outlier, the asterisk. He worries about what else he's missed when she's been right in front of him.

Is determined not to let history repeat itself.)

"Of course," he says softly, and she slides in to her chair, swiveling it enough so she can roll over to the little bed she'd bought. They sit knee-to-knee in silence for a moment and he watches as she rubs at where her glasses are perched on her nose. Hesitantly, tentatively, he puts a hand on her leg, willing her to know, in spite of his shortcomings, that he is always a safe place for her, a haven in a hurricane world. She laces her fingers with his mostly on instinct and sighs heavily. "You know the one thing I kept thinking while she was here?"

It's not a question he's supposed to answer, so he sits quietly and lets her finish in her own time. "I wanted to know why she didn't come to my college graduation." She shakes her head, and a few stray droplets that must've gotten caught on her hair from the light shower dampening the walk from her car to him slide down her neck and darken the blue of the sweater she's wearing. "I was the first person in my family to even _go_ to college, and she couldn't make the effort."

(He's a hypocrite for thinking less of Donna Smoak for not going the extra mile for her daughter, he knows that. It's why the biggest fight he's ever taken on is the one to make himself worthy of this moment, any moment.

All the moments.)

"I walked around campus after the ceremony," she continues, a shiver going down her spine, and he squeezes her knee in encouragement before heading to the coffee maker and brewing something hot to help warm her up. "Saw all these kids with their families, taking pictures and planning to meet up for dinner at the Pizzeria Uno on Comm Ave, and I was just...alone." She chuckles sardonically. "Some things never change."

"Felicity." He doesn't intend his voice to be as soft as it is, the tone identical to the one he'd used when he'd said her name in a hospital hallway eight months ago, and he certainly doesn't intend to crouch down in front of her, tilting her chin up with his index finger, but he does not fight his instinct - that's how they got in this mess in the first place, he remembers with a sting worse than the circumstances under which he'd received any of his scars - and does both. "You're not alone."

She searches his eyes for something. and he lets her look, because his armor is chinked, his walls are down, his defenses are breached, and he's willing to go once more into the fray if it means coming back out of it with her trust of him intact.

(He's willing to wait however long it takes for her love to return as well. A lifetime, because it won't be really be one until she's in it.)

"You're not alone," he repeats, "and I'm proud enough of you for the both of us."

His heart stops in his throat when he sees her eyes fill with tears, and he runs his thumb gently over one that escapes down her cheek. "MIT was lucky to have you." He takes a deep breath, then cups her cheek, and his skin sings when she leans into his touch just a little bit. (It's enough.) "And so am I."

She offers a shaky smile - the gratiude, however, is cemented - and then says quietly, gently dismissing him and the discussion for now. "Coffee's ready."

It takes another year for _them_ to be ready, but when they are, they go to Boston in October for alumni weekend and she laces her left hand with his right as she sips at her Dunkin' Donuts coffee and uses their linked hands to point out various buildings, regaling him with the story behind the pot brownie incident when someone calls out to her.

She stops and turns, and he's made himself read her well enough that though she doesn't outwardly start, the momentary tightening of her hand around his raises his own hackles.

"Justin!" she says as a man with sandy hair jogs toward them, a lilt in her voice Oliver knows is insincere but that seems cheerful to the rest of the world. "How are you?"

There's a half-hug and a plastered smile on Felicity's face, and then she gestures to Oliver with her half full cup. "Oliver Queen, this is Justin Whiting. We lived on the same floor freshman year."

"Well, some of us lived more on the lacrosse field than in the actual dorm," Justin says and everything clicks into place. Oliver sizes up the man in front of him, and he doesn't see a trace of a college athlete anywhere, not anymore. And while he understands the guy being irrationally, irrevocably in love with Felicity, he has to work to tamp down the instinct to go "angry face" on him for bothering her then as he did.

(He wonders sometimes what kind of person he'd be had they met before.

Mostly, though, he concentrates on being here now; on being better with her as much as he wants to be better _for_ her.)

A curvy redheaded woman and little boy about six meander to where they're standing, and Justin puts a hand at the small of the woman's back. "My wife, Melissa." He ruffles the child's hair. "And this monstrosity is Max. This is Felicity Smoak. She helped your old dad not flunk Chemistry."

Max holds out his hand, which Felicity takes and shakes heartily. "Hi, Ms. Smoak," he says politely, and then repeats the gesture to Oliver. "Hi, Mr. Smoak."

Felicity chokes on the sip of coffee she'd just taken, and instinctively Oliver rubs the space between her shoulder blades, then leaves his hand at the nape of her neck, thumb rubbing against the freckles there, because he knows it soothes her. He shakes his head when Justin goes to correct his son, because it's not a big deal - even if the idea does send his heart racing a little bit.

(He's wanted a lot of things in his life, been given most of them outright, but forever with her is something he's only just realized he'd started hoping for somewhere between Queen Consolidated and Queen Mansion - somewhere between _hi, i'm Oliver Queen_ and _so he took the wrong woman - _and is determined to earn.)

They chat for a little bit longer, and he and Felicity share an entire conversation in a singular, silent look when they see how Max's entire being goes wistful when he hears Oliver and Felicity have tickets to that evening's Red Sox game at Fenway and end up offering their tickets so he and his dad can enjoy the game. Max nearly knocks both of them over in thanks, wrapping an arm around each of their torsos.

(He sees something in Felicity's eyes when he glances over at her after smiling down at the exuberant little boy, a flash of a future, a dream drawn in haze and hope but that feels like it could be as corporeal as the child in their midst, and again he lets her see the truth he sees in _her_, and the promise that whatever he is, whatever's left of him and whatever he could be is hers.)

They watch the game from the Pizzeria Uno on Comm Ave that night, walk back to their hotel to the sound of the distant cheering crowd, and when a thank-you card of crayon and construction paper shows up on her desk at Queen Consolidated a few weeks later - addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Smoak - both letter and drawing hang on their refrigerator when she gets home.

(Eventually, their save the date card gets hung next to it. And still further down the line, a sonogram.

He makes sure Donna Smoak shows up for both.)


End file.
